Column: How the Chicago Bears used a combination of poise and belief to spark their Week 1 comeback

Darrell Taylor is pretty new around these parts, having first settled into his Halas Hall locker four weeks ago. He’s still learning about his new teammates and the new defense he joined and the energized culture so many inside the Chicago Bears organization had boasted about for months before he arrived.

Yet after the Bears stumbled into a 17-0 first-half deficit against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday at Soldier Field, Taylor might have learned the most important lesson of all.

“I learned that this team is resilient as (bleep),” Taylor said Wednesday. “I’m sorry that I’m saying that, but I have to. I learned this team is resilient as (bleep). And everybody was in it. Nobody blinked an eye.”

With every reason to feel dispirited by their sloppy start, with every opening to grow anxious and frustrated, the Bears instead set their jaw and rallied.

The result was a rousing 24-17 comeback victory that strengthened the team’s resolve and belief.

Taylor, with two sacks and a forced fumble, was right in the middle of the turnaround, helping spark a second-half surge in which the Bears defense allowed only 65 yards and four first downs while creating three takeaways.

“The message was: ‘Just keep going. We’re right where we need to be,'” Taylor said. “We made some mistakes here and there obviously. But it was about keeping our foot on the gas pedal and keeping the belief in each other. And that’s what we did.”

It’s no small deal that the Bears won in that fashion this early in the season, rallying around each other with a combination of calm and tenacity. Perhaps that will become one of the big separators for this team, which not only has aspirations of playing deep into January, but also is showing the confidence and drive necessary to make that possible.

In the first game of a long season, the Bears cleared an important hurdle.

“As a human being,” linebacker Tremaine Edmunds said, “that mindset boost is huge. You see what it takes to overcome adversity. And you understand as a group that it’s about putting your head down, locking in and going to work.”

‘We got this’

Behind by 14 points at halftime, Edmunds walked into the Bears locker room and was struck by the vibe. There was no discernible grousing, no finger-pointing, no negativity.

Instead, players and coaches noted a swell in collective purpose.

“There was just a belief that we could all get it done,” Edmunds said. “Everyone in the locker room believed. And we were saying it out loud, just, ‘Nah, we’re going to win this game. We’re going to win this game.’ It always starts with that belief.”

That might sound like a small thing, the vocalization of the ultimate team goal. But Edmunds is convinced it played a major role in propelling the Bears into a dominant second half in which they outscored the Titans 21-0.

“It’s almost like the law of attraction,” Edmunds said. “You speak good and good will come unto you. And when you say it out loud — ‘We got this’ — people can feed off that energy.

“Because energy is contagious, man. I believe that. That’s good energy and bad energy. And when you put good energy in the air like that, it’s going to reset different guys into saying, ‘You know what? We can win this game.’ That’s how it went down. We didn’t really have to persuade anybody.”

Safety Jaquan Brisker agrees.

“My first couple years here, that probably would not have happened,” Brisker said. “We’re probably losing that game. But this year, you can feel it’s a different team. We believe in each other. And to come back at home with the fans behind us like that? It’s huge.”

Finding a way

Brisker might not be able to put a finger on exactly what’s different in 2024 from 2023 or 2022. But he boils it down to this: “The biggest difference, in my opinion, is probably the trust and belief we have in each other. There was no panic. You can feel how close we are. And that made a big difference.”

That’s the secret sauce teams talk about all the time but rarely find. It’s an intangible, to be certain. But for the Bears, a contagious surge of determination was obvious during Sunday’s second half.

It’s what allowed Taylor to make his game-changing contributions. It’s what propelled linebacker T.J. Edwards to 15 tackles and a fumble recovery. It’s what energized Daniel Hardy and Jonathan Owens to combine on a blocked punt returned for a touchdown.

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And when a game-winning play was needed, it’s what turned DeMarcus Walker loose on the pass rush for a hit on quarterback Will Levis, which led to Levis’ poor decision to try a chest pass toward the sideline, which led to Tyrique Stevenson’s interception and 43-yard return for a go-ahead touchdown.

Persistence. Positive energy. No panic.

“This was about poise and confidence,” Walker said.

That was the ideal formula for the Bears’ Week 1 comeback, which provided momentum heading into Sunday’s prime-time game against the Texans in Houston.

The Bears are convinced they now have fuel to use for the remainder of the season.

“Good teams find ways to win,” Edwards said. “That’s something we have to build off. This is a new team and a new year. So everything that happens like (Sunday) is something to build off.

“We have the guys in here to keep everything together through all the highs and lows. And we have to keep doing that.”