Flashback to Thanksgiving weekend:  The Bears played on Sunday Night Football at Minnesota.  They gave up a 99 yard TD pass to fomer Bear Bernard Berrian, on their way to a 34-14 loss.  It put the Bears at 6-6, 1 game behind the Vikings for the division lead.  They were also staring up at Tampa Bay, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, and tied with New Orleans for the Wild Card.  Things were looking rather bleak.

Then they beat up on the Jaguars, and won a pair of 3 point OT games against the Saints and Packers, and all of the sudden they were smack dab in the middle of the Playoff race.  They needed a win, plus some help.  Well, they got the help, but failed on the winning part.  They went into Houston, and got beat 31-24, thus ending any playoff chances they had. 

For a team with little expectations coming into the season (seems like 7-9 or worse was the norm), getting within 1 win of the playoffs is quite an accomplishment.  Even though they lost that last game, I think the momentum at the end of the season will continue into 2009, as long as they get some help at some key positions.

The Bears have 7 total picks in this year's draft, one in each round.  They do end up losing 1 spot in the 6th round, as they "swapped" picks with Tampa Bay.  They get Tampa's pick from the Brian Griese trade, and Tampa gets the Bears pick for Dan Buenning.  This will give them many opportunities to fill in the gaps.

I've combined rankings for the Bears based on game stats, and from Football Outsiders.  Here's how the Bears stacked up this season:

If I gave you these numbers, without the record, would you have guessed this team won 9 games?  It's a testament to the players and coaching staff that they overachieved this year.  I think another part of it is they gave up a lot of yards, but kept the other team from scoring.

The other thing that jumps off the page at me is the Passing defense.  By straight yardage, only the Chargers and Seahawks were worse.  On the flip side, they were ranked 11th by FO.  Why is this?  A couple theories of mine:

• The Bears finished 8th in the league on Passing 3rd down defense.  This takes a greater significance in DVOA than straight yardage.  
• The Bears played 7 games against the top 11 Passing offenses (according to DVOA).  Only three times did those offenses pass for over 250 yards.
• They gave up 407 yards to former Bear Brian Griese, which is a lot of yards.  However, it took him 67 attempts to get there, which is only 6.1 yds/att.  Suddenly, 407 yards doesn't seem so bad.  The league average was 6.5 yds/att, so I'd say it was a pretty good day.

An overachieving team means not much shakeup in the coaching staff.  They did replace their Defensive Line coach with former Lions Head Coach Rod Marinelli, and Head Coach Lovie Smith will be taking a more hands-on approach to the defense next season.  Smith is a lot like his mentor Tony Dungy, in that he doesn't fire too many coaches.  He just stays the course.

I'd be remiss to do a profile of the Bears without mentioning former starting QB Rex "The Sex Cannon" Grossman.  He did lead them to the Super Bowl in '06 (thanks in large part to their defense and Devin Hester), but could never be counted on to not screw up, let alone win a game.  The Bears absolutely made the right decision by going to Kyle Orton, who I think is a pretty good QB.  He makes good decisions (only 12 INTs), and can be counted on to win a game (see OT wins against NO and GB).  I don't see Grossman coming back next year, as he is a Free Agent.

The Bears did hit the Jackpot last year in the draft, picking Matt Forte with the 13th pick in the 2nd round.  He was fantastic, but touched the ball 379 times, tops in the league.  He needs a right hand man.  I asked WCG, head writer at Windy City Gridiron, about the RB situation:

Forte touched the ball more for the Bears than any other player in the league.  If they want him around for 10 years he cannot continue to carry the ball 400 times a year.  The Bears are first and always a run team.  So long as they run with Orton they need a complement back who can spell Forte and be a change of pace.  I think the Bears do take a running back in the draft,  but  probably not in the first 3 rounds.

I'm going to heed his advice, and stay away from taking a RB for the Bears early in the draft, as they can get a decent back later in the draft.

The 2008 Bears surprised a lot of people last year, and are primed to have a similar 2009, riding the momentum from the end of the season.  If they can get the same production from an '09 rookie that they got from Forte, the Bears could be the team to beat in the NFC North.