Bears' Defense: Been There, Done That
The Bears' offense is relatively young and inexperienced, when it comes to the playoffs. On the other hand, the Bears' defense is still full of players from the 2006 team.
"We hope it helps. Where you don't have to wonder what exactly it feels like to play a playoff game," Lovie Smith said of the Bears' experience on defense. "So we are there."
Players like Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman and Tommie Harris all played important roles on the 2006 team that made it all the way to the Super Bowl and lost. That experience, even the losing experience, can go along way towards helping the defense as a whole.
"As much as anything," Lovie said, "our veterans have been talking to some of the younger players, nothing negative, it's all positive, about just earning an opportunity to have these feeling going on."
Positivity is a staple of the Bears players, the defense especially. Throughout everything that they've gone through over the last 12 months, they've stayed positive and committed to the system and schemes.
Talk that their head coach should be fired wasn't silenced until the the last portion of the regular season. But the Bears have experienced that before and come out on the other side.
With their first playoffs game now just over a week away, that experience will be called on once again. And this time they'll hopefully add a new experience, and end the playoffs without a loss.
