Dan Wiederer: The Chicago Bears failed their final exam but got a postseason invitation anyway — typical of a bizarre 2020 season

Shake your head if you must, Chicago. Shrug continuously if the urge comes over you. The Chicago Bears are headed to the playoffs. Deserving or not.

They have at least one more game to play Sunday in New Orleans. Accept it for what it is. Whatever it is.

That’s the bizarre world we’re living in right now. So little makes much sense.

An absolutely weird NFL regular season finished with a wild Sunday across the country. And while the Bears failed their own final exam at Soldier Field — falling apart in the fourth quarter, losing 35-16 to the Green Bay Packers and showing they’re still clearly inferior to their division rivals — they somehow secured a playoff invitation anyway. The Los Angeles Rams’ 18-7 defeat of the Arizona Cardinals 1,700 miles away kicked open the backdoor.

C’mon in! Glad to have ya!

So with their chins on their chests and their spirits dampened, the Bears trudged into the tunnel in the northwest corner of Soldier Field a little before 6:30 p.m. only to learn they were stumbling into the playoffs.

“I’ve never been in this situation,” Bears coach Matt Nagy said, so clearly bummed by the loss. “So sorry for being a little bit (subdued). You’re excited because you’re in, right?”

Welcome to the land of mixed emotions, where frustration, confusion and tempered excitement attempted a group hug Sunday evening.

Added safety Eddie Jackson: “It’s a bittersweet taste right now. But we’ve got to swallow that pill.”

In 101 seasons, there never has been a Bears playoff team that experienced this much aggravation or this many losses. The volume of frustration has been seemingly double any fun.

What is anyone supposed to do with all that?

At some point soon, the leaders at the top of Halas Hall will be forced to sift through every part of this unusual, topsy-turvy season to determine what exactly it means to the organization’s direction and future. Sunday’s loss sealed the Bears’ second consecutive 8-8 season, two disappointing campaigns bookended by dispiriting home losses to the Packers.

Since winning the NFC North in 2018, the Bears have been mired in mediocrity. Sixteen wins. Sixteen losses. Ten games behind the rival Packers during that span. Just when a window to compete annually for championships seemed to be opening too.

Yet it has become clear to anyone with an objective eye that the Bears are a long, long way from meaningful championship contention. After all, they went to bed Sunday evening five games behind the Packers, who beat them twice this season by a combined 35 points.

Still, this week suddenly calls for everyone in the Bears organization to devote their full attention to the playoffs and an improbable wild-card weekend field trip to face the 12-4 Saints.

Don’t forget, the Bears took these same Saints to overtime in Week 8 before falling 26-23. Now they get a playoff rematch.

“I don’t care how we get there,” Jackson said. “We’re in.”

The ugliness of Sunday’s loss to the Packers and the realities it again illuminated remain impossible to ignore. These Bears aren’t very good.

They can be fun to watch, of course. In spurts. Like when the offense took its opening drive Sunday and rolled 60 yards in 14 plays for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead.

The Bears were confident. They were in rhythm. They converted an early fourth-and-3 with a 7-yard completion from Mitch Trubisky to Anthony Miller and then scored on David Montgomery’s 2-yard run. That was a nice start.

“That’s ideally what you would like the other drives to look like,” Trubisky said, “where we’re controlling the ball, staying on the field and then converting third or fourth downs and finishing in the end zone. That definitely gave us a lot of confidence early on.”

Later in the first half, a special teams takeaway, with Demetrius Harris forcing a fumble on a Tavon Austin punt return and DeAndre Houston-Carson recovering the loose ball, gave the Bears the kind of big play that can fuel an upset bid.

But alas, after the first drive, the Bears never reached the end zone again. The defense never came up with a takeaway. And Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers treated Chicago to its biannual torture treatment.

Rodgers completed all 10 of his passes in the first half for 155 yards with three touchdowns. His first incompletion — a deep shot down the middle to Marquez Valdes-Scantling — should have been a 53-yard touchdown pass, but Valdes-Scantling dropped it.

Rodgers wound up throwing four touchdown passes — one each to Robert Tonyan, Valdes-Scantling, Dominique Dafney and Davante Adams.

His 78-yard strike to Valdes-Scantling in the second quarter seemed particularly Rodgers-like as he beat a blitz, recognized a perfect matchup and dropped a dime into his receiver’s mitts 27 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. The Bears had no help over the top. Valdes-Scantling easily outraced linebacker Danny Trevathan to the north end zone. And the Bears were reminded what they were up against.

Needing a win to guarantee a playoff trip, the Bears probably needed to deliver their best performance of the season. But they didn’t. And they were ultimately undone by some familiar offensive clunkiness. Three times they stalled inside the red zone, settling for Cairo Santos field goals.

“You can’t play the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers and kick field goals,” Nagy said. “We have to get touchdowns. There’s no other way.”

Nagy seemed most agitated by the failure to convert on fourth-and-1 with the Bears attempting to finish off a potential go-ahead touchdown drive early in the fourth quarter. Instead, Trubisky’s roll-out pass to Allen Robinson was almost intercepted by Chandon Sullivan and fell incomplete.

Neither Nagy nor Trubisky would get into the details of what went haywire there. Both were obviously aggravated.

“We’ve got to get that,” Nagy said. “I’m not going to get into the why part. Because that’s just for me and the coaches and the players. But I want to get that. That one bothers me.”

Added Trubisky: “They had a better call on than we did. And they executed better than we did. Credit goes to them. I think the only thing we could’ve done in that situation was maybe run something else.”

The Packers responded with a 76-yard touchdown drive, intercepted Trubisky on the next possession and scored another touchdown to turn a tight game into a runaway.

For the Bears, it was all so ugly and so darn familiar.

Still, somehow in this odd and unbelievable season, Sunday’s major failures were suddenly erased. For the most part, anyway. The Cardinals fell flat on their faces in Los Angeles, and the Bears were escorted back into the playoffs for the second time in three seasons. Deserving or not.

Even they seemed to be having great difficulty figuring out what to do with that news and the conflicting emotions they were experiencing Sunday night.

“I have to reset myself. I’m still emotionally feeling this game,” Nagy said. “I’m not at the playoff part yet. Once I get over that here in the next hour or two, it’s going to be right on to the Saints. … I apologize if I’m not all balloons everywhere. But tomorrow it’s going to be energetic. There’s going to be some juice.”

“Our job is just to make the most of this,” Trevathan said. “It could be the other way around.”

Shake your head if you must. Shrug continuously if that urge comes over you. That’s the way this season has been.

Odd. Strange. Hard to process. And for the Bears, there will be another week.