NFL Snub May Have Saved the Chicago Bears From Another West Coast Disaster

So the NFL in its infinite wisdom decided the Bears will not be in the NFL Kickoff Game and instead open against Carolina.

This is their opener according to Jordan Schultz of Fox Sports.

Apparently the NFL doesn't like incredible TV ratings with Caleb Williams playing, but it' just money. It's a break for the Bears going against a team that had a losing record even if they did win their division.

Either way, the end result is probably just as well for the Bears based on franchise history, recent and ancient.

Traveling to play in a game on the West Coast against anyone is not really a good thing for the Bears at any point, but particularly in season-opening games.

Whether it's the two-hour difference in time or whatever the reason, the Bears have not been able to play well since the end of the Mike Ditka regime on the West Coast, except in a very few select situations. One of those has been the team they're playing downright stinks, but this has not happened often to those teams.

Maybe the only recent time it happened was 2021 during Nick Foles' last great NFL hurrah in Seattle. The former Super Bowl MVP started on the day after Christmas with the Bears' season in tatters and both Justin Fields and Andy Dalton unavailable to play quarterback. Foles led a 25-24 comeback win, allying the Bears from a 24-14 fourth-quarter deficit. Foles never won another NFL start.

A record of West Coast Bears misery

Normally such West Coast trips have not gone well for the Bears. They've:

• Lost four of their last six in Seattle

• Gone 2-0 against the Raiders since they moved to Vegas, baby. but they were 3-5 in Oakland and Los Angeles.

• Lost 10 of their last 12 at San Francisco

• Since the Rams moved back to Los Angeles from St. Louis, the Bears are 0-3 and going back even longer they lost their last seven to them in L.A.

• They do have a winning record against the Chargers in San Diego, 3-2, but then again the Chargers don't play in San Diego anymore. The Bears lost their only game in Los Angeles against the Chargers 30-13 in 2023.

It's not even so much losing, but losing in embarrassing fashion that says they're better off not traveling out west for the opener. They lost 49-7 in San Francisco in a season opener in 2003, 34-14 in L.A. to the Rams in 2021, and even 52-24 way back in the 1965 opener at San Francisco when they had Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus as rookies.

If it's not Mike Ditka getting mad and throwing his gum at people, then it's any other number of horrors that befall them out west, like Terrell Owens catching an NFL record 20 passes against them in a 17-0 loss in 2000 to the Niners.

Even Ben Johnson has lost out there. The Niners last year beat them in that wild Monday night game, 42-38, when Caleb Williams threw off his back foot and couldn't get enough on the ball to hit a lunging Jahda Walker at the front of the end zone on their last gasp.

Of course, the Bears will have to go out to Seattle at some point this season, but maybe they'll get lucky and it will be a 3 p.m. game when no one except Chicago and Seattle are watching. That way they won't get embarrassed in front of the whole nation like they could in the NFL's Kickoff Game.

There were plenty of reasons to like the matchup in Week 1, but putting off the inevitable as long as possible might be for the better based on history.

X: BearsOnSI

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