Bears After the Bye - What to Expect in the Second "Half" of the Season

It's odd how things work out sometimes.  Four weeks ago, the Illini were undefeated, and it looked to me as if the Bears were on the fast track to mediocrity after a Monday night loss to Detroit dropped them to 2-3.  But since then, the Illini have lost three straight games, crushing any hope of New Year's Day football, while the Bears have a two-game winning streak and renewed playoff hopes.  When the Illini were up the Bears were down.  Now, the Bears are up, and the Illini are down.  You know who I am?  Even Steven!

With the Bears are coming out of the bye week at 4-3 (the same record they had at the bye week in 2010), the next two games will most likely determine which way the 2011 season breaks.  A win over the Eagles on Monday night would give the Bears the tiebreaker edge over three of their potential competitors (Eagles, Falcons, Bucs) for wild card spots.  While a loss at Philadelphia wouldn't be fatal to a Bears' playoff run, the next game, at home against the Lions (another potential wild card competitor), is the real key to the team's postseason chances.  If the Bears are swept by Detroit there's no way the Bears will catch the Lions, and the Bears would have no way to make the playoffs other than as the NFC's #6 seed.  But a Bears victory would go a long way toward helping them finish ahead of the Lions, especially since Detroit still has to play Green Bay twice.

With the almost-second half of the schedule about to get underway (it would be much cleaner if the bye week fell at the exact midpoint of the season, but what can you do about that?), I figure this is a good time to try to guess if the Bears will return to the postseason.  I originally had the Bears finishing at 8-8, but there's been a slight change in my forecast.  I'm assuming the Bears will follow last year's formula, in which after the bye week, Mike Martz "chose" to go with more conservative, run-oriented game plans instead of the pass-happy, let's-get-Jay-Cutler-killed game plans he prefers.  Based on that assumption, here's how I see things unfolding the rest of the way, game by game:

• at Philadelphia - loss
• Lions - win 
• San Diego - win 
• at Oakland - win
• Kansas City - loss (this is the one we "Martz" away with a lopsided pass-over-run ratio).
• at Denver - win 
• Seattle - win
• at Green Bay - yeah, right
• at Minnesota - win

That would put the Bears at 10-6.  I'm also predicting that the tiebreakers will give the Bears the #5 seed in the NFC playoffs, and a wild-card weekend playoff rematch against the #4 seed, the NFC East Champion Philadelphia Eagles.  That all sounds pretty good to me.  Now, as the famous French philosopher would say: