Season Is On the Line vs. CHI
Dustin Baker
|
Since Mitchell Trubisky took over as the Bears franchise quarterback in 2017, Chicago has battled to a 4-3 record against the Minnesota Vikings. Vikings skipper Mike Zimmer took over in 2014, and Minnesota boasted a 4-2 record versus the Bears from 2014 to 2016. So, Trubisky has made a difference, or at the very least, the team has played better on the whole against the Vikings since he arrived from the University of North Carolina.
Despite that positive record versus the Vikings, this is probably the last time that Minnesota will see Trubisky as the Bearsstarting quarterback. His contract is up this spring, he isn’t very good, and the notion that Chicago would enter 2021 with him as their starter is goofy. Chicago will likely draft a new signal-caller in April – while feverishly hoping to avoid a whiff on players like Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson akin to 2017.
This Week 15 game is important, though. The Vikings and Bears do the Spider-man meme for win-loss record. Both are 6-7 andfighting to the finish for the NFC’s seventh playoff seed. The Vikings and Bears are Cardinals deniers for the next few weeks as Arizona must lose one or more games for an NFC North team to slip into the postseason. Objectively, that is quite doable. The Cardinals converted the Hail Murray play in a game with the formidable Buffalo Bills before Thanksgiving. After that, Kyler Murray and Co. dropped three of their next four games – unbecoming of a serious playoff team with the steam of toppling a squad like Buffalo.
The door is open. Either the Vikings or Bears can grift the seven-seed from the Cardinals. But that team of mini-destiny must win in Week 15.
A Win Increases Vikings Heartrate
Per fivethirtyeight.com, the Vikings maintain a 21% chance of joining the NFL playoffs in January. That percentage is good up until kickoff versus the Bears in Week 15. The Bears linger with the same mathematics, 19% entering Week 15.
Should the Vikings reign victorious, that percentage immediately jumps to 35%. And, that’s before seeing anything at all from the Cardinals-Eagles matchup. Naturally, VikingsVille is a bastion of fandom in the column of Philadelphia – for one week only. Why? If the Vikings poach the Bears at U.S. Bank Stadium this weekend while the Cardinals fall to the Eagles, Minnesota’s playoff probability spurts to 55%. This late in the season, 55% is eye candy because the Vikings were 1-5 two months ago with everything burning. The “franchise is crumbling” attitude was fixed – seemingly overnight – when Minnesota rattled off five wins in seven weeks post-bye.
A Vikings win over the Bears and a Cardinals win would basically keep the purple and gold treading water. Minnesota’s playoff chances would hop to 23% from 21% if Vikings and Cardinals wins materializes this weekend.
Loss Will be Dagger
If the Bears play their damndest and stump the Vikings on Sunday, you can go to your kitchen and retrieve a fork to stick in Minnesota. No matter what happens with the Cardinals, the Vikings playoff dreams plummet profusely with a loss. A Vikings loss and Cardinals win guts Minnesota’s playoff numbers to less than 1%. A double loss (MIN and ARI) plops the Vikings at a 7% chance.
An uninspired effort by the Vikings in this game – akin to Week 2 or Week 6 – will relapse the “Fire Zimmer” and “Cut Cousins” chatter. Zimmer does not allow for more one than one or two clunkers per season, so the likelihood of the Vikings showing up Sunday woefully unprepared is slim.
Eric Kendricks and Kyle Rudolph will miss Week 15, which is not ideal. But the Bears are missing players like Buster Skrine and Jaylon Johnson, crucial pieces to the team’s secondary. Minnesota arguably has the roster talent to defeat the Bears at home – they just need to execute.
Same Gig for the Bears
The same stakes apply for Chicago. A win over the Vikings keeps the movie playing. A loss ensures that Chicago has similar chances to the Vikings probability detailed above. The 1% vs. 7% sort of outcome.
Chicago began 2020 with a 5-1 record as the team played hot potato at quarterback between Trubisky and Nick Foles. Coach Matt Nagy stuck with Foles, and Trubiskiy tumbled into irrelevance on Chicago’s injury report. However, the Bears began losing – in nosedive fashion. The name “Mitchell Trubisky” got really sexy again, really quick.
That sexiness climaxed in Week 14. The Bears thrashed Deshaun Watson and the Texans – so here we are. It’s Vikings and Bears in Minneapolis for the prize of keeping playoff ambitions alive.