It’s time for a change — but what will happen at Halas Hall? Brad Biggs’ 10 thoughts after the Chicago Bears lost their final game to finish the season 6-11.

MINNEAPOLIS — 10 thoughts after the Chicago Bears lost for the ninth time in their last 12 games, finishing the 2021 season at 6-11 with a 31-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium.

It’s expected the Bears will fire coach Matt Nagy after four seasons, one division title, two postseason appearances, no playoff wins, one Coach of the Year award and a 34-33 record (including postseason).

Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, a Lockport High School alumnus, also could be at the end of the line after an eight-year run that includes a 74-59-1 record and three postseason appearances. Ultimately, neither coach has been able to solve the Green Bay Packers with any regularity.

The Bears played hard for Nagy down the stretch. They had a 14-0 lead in this game before the Vikings dominated the second half. The offense was 5 of 15 on third down and 1 of 6 on fourth down, and that won’t get it done most weeks. It’s no surprise the offense was to blame, and there were breakdowns on defense too. The Bears celebrated complementary football when they experienced it over the last four years, but it was fleeting the last three years.

There’s something to be said for Nagy continuing to get effort out of a team when the season was lost. Enough to consider even a remote possibility of keeping him? No, not after experiencing an extended losing streak for the third consecutive season. The Bears began to spiral in October, and by the time they pulled out of it with a narrow 16-14 victory over a woeful Detroit Lions team on Thanksgiving, the season was pretty much shot.

The Bears were 4-7 at that point and followed up that win with three more losses. It says a lot about the season that Nagy said after Sunday’s game that he’ll always be able to look back on that victory over the Lions.

Injuries hit the Bears hard this season. They’ve been without some of their top players for extended periods, a list that includes pass rusher Khalil Mack, defensive lineman Akiem Hicks, free safety Eddie Jackson, wide receiver Allen Robinson and quarterbacks Andy Dalton and Justin Fields. Like every other team, there were a rash of COVID-19 issues in the second half of the season. Again, this doesn’t absolve Nagy and his staff.

The unavoidable issue — the one the Bears tried like hell to fix and always seemed to dance around when asked about it — is Nagy never fixed the offense. He started with a bang back in 2018. Through the first 10 weeks of that season, which included nine Bears games, they averaged 29.9 points to rank fifth in the league.

The offense was innovative. It was entertaining. It was working. But lost in the excitement of a 12-4 season was adequate coverage of how the offense wasn’t nearly as productive in the second half of that season. The Bears mustered only 15 points in a home playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. They scored nine in a wild-card loss in New Orleans last January. In the 58 games (including playoffs) since the hot start, the Bears averaged 19.6 points. Not good enough. It wasn’t like the offense slumped. It regressed and never recovered.

Nagy reacted after the 2019 season by making wholesale changes to his offensive coaching staff. Wide receivers coach Mike Furrey — who played a role in developing only one player successfully in Darnell Mooney — is the only original position coach still with the team. Coaching changes, new personnel, shifts in emphasis — none of it worked.

“There’s a lot that goes into that question,” Nagy said when asked why the offense continued to struggle.

Sure, there are layers to it. The reality is whatever Nagy has tried hasn’t worked. Remember when he talked in London about fixing the running game? At times it has been about third down. At others it has been the red zone.

“There’s so much when you look at different teams and where they’re at, whether it’s different positions, how they work together in all three phases, whatever that is,” Nagy said. “It’s a team game. So we know we want to be better offensively. We know it hasn’t been what we wanted it to be. But that’s what you need to do as a coach is try to find answers. You get together with personnel and you figure out where you’re weak, position-wise. Schematically, that’s part of your question too.

“Stating the obvious, we need to be better in the red zone. I don’t think we were good enough this year in the red zone. Getting better there — whether that’s players, whether it’s scheme, whatever it is — you have to score more points.”

Scheme and personnel. Those are two topics Nagy always danced around. He was paired with a second-year quarterback in Mitch Trubisky when he arrived. By the end of the 2019 season, it was apparent that made him uncomfortable. Why else would he turn to Nick Foles in 2020 before losing a game?

The scheme didn’t seem to adjust as it needed to. The Bears ran the ball well for most of this season, but I’m not sure the coaching staff was doing what it wanted to and it always seemed like they were several answers short of having the key to the test. Offensive coordinator Bill Lazor was fired in Miami because interim coach Dan Campbell didn’t think Lazor was running the ball enough. Zimmer fired quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo in Minnesota because DeFilippo wasn’t running the ball enough.

So you had offensive coaches who want to throw the ball having to shift their philosophy and construct a passing game based off running the ball. It just didn’t fit well and was too often messy with a rookie quarterback in Fields.

Nagy kept the Bears competitive in spurts until October rolled around. That’s when things started to unravel for the final time. Ultimately, you’re going to be judged on how many times you went to the playoffs and how many times you won in the playoffs. The Bears backdoored into the playoffs last year, and they went from division champs in 2018 to not being able to sustain much of anything. That’s because they never really formed an identity, at least not offensively.

“My four years, I look at a few things,” Nagy said. “You look at developing players, specifically at their positions, guys that you’re part of in the draft process with Ryan (Pace) and all of our personnel and our coaching and all the time that goes into that. Then you look into each specific season. We had a really good first year together at 12-4.

“Now, we continue to grow here. As you build through the draft, you have young guys that are getting better and better each year. They’re improving. We have some older guys, too, on this roster that have been a part of this, and just seeing how that rolls. I’m just proud of these players, I really am. I’m proud of the coaches. I know how much they care and I know how much they want to be better. To me, that matters.

“Now, again, we understand our record. We know that that’s real and that’s a part of it.”

The record, the wins and losses, the ruts the team has been through the last three years — ultimately they all signal it’s time for change.

There’s a lot of speculation about Nagy’s situation on a national level. Mentioned much less often, at least until the last week or so, has been Pace.

There was a current last week that after seven seasons as GM, Pace could be shifted into a new role, perhaps with a promotion, and have a hand in selecting a new general manager — and after that a new coach. That’s the word well-intentioned folks, people without a dog in the fight, said they heard. At this time of year, rumors travel at warp speed through the NFL. As soon as you get done digesting one, you can get hit with another. But I heard a version of this scenario from unconnected folks.

Maybe that’s what will happen. I wrote about Pace and Nagy and their routine discussion of “collaboration.” But the more I thought about this possible outcome over the course of the weekend, it seems unlikely to me. When you hear the same story ahead of time, often it doesn’t come to fruition.

It’s well-documented how much Bears Chairman George McCaskey likes Pace. He would have to be over the moon for him to create a new layer of upper management to keep him. There’s simply no way the Bears can go forward with Pace as GM after one winning season in seven years with no playoff wins. The Bears would struggle to attract top coaching candidates if he was the GM. I suppose you could find a new role for him and get a quality GM and go from there, but as many times as I tried walking through the possibilities, it just didn’t add up.

Pace pinned his feelings about the future of the Bears on their young talent in a pregame interview with play-by-play voice Jeff Joniak on WBBM-AM 780.

“There is significant contribution from the last two draft classes,” Pace said. “The talent from that young core just continues to expand as they get play time and they get opportunities. When I look at that young core we’re talking about, they all love football, they all love the process, the preparation. They’re all extremely passionate and prideful. They’re all high-end football IQ and they are competitive in everything they do. They all hate losing. And I think that culture continues to expand with our team with that young core, and as the torch gets passed to that group of players, it’s really exciting.”

The Bears have been banging the drum for their draft picks the last two years, and I’m not sure the rest of the league holds these players in the same regard. In a best-case scenario, there are maybe eight starters in Week 1 of the 2022 season who were drafted the last two years: Quarterback Justin Fields, offensive tackles Teven Jenkins and Larry Borom, defensive tackle Khyiris Tonga, tight end Cole Kmet, cornerback Jaylon Johnson, outside linebacker Trevis Gipson and wide receiver Darnell Mooney. You can make a case maybe two of those players — Johnson and Mooney — are difference makers right now. That’s not a real strong case either.

I’ve said for quite some time the Bears have been guilty of overvaluing their skill-position talent. The same goes for their draft picks. You can’t say right now if Jenkins or Borom will pan out. Running back Khalil Herbert had a nice rookie season, but late-round running backs are most often a dime a dozen. Gipson showed progress in the second half of the season, and if he continues to improve, he could turn into a fine player — but he has ground to cover. The great wild card in the whole deal is Fields. If he works out, he would make those other players look better and the Bears could be on their way.

“Obviously, the quarterback is the critical piece to any team’s success,” Pace said. “We feel really good about that. We have good flexibility with our cap going forward. We’ll continue to stack strong draft classes and just continue to add to that core, and that’s the blueprint.”

Pace talks about building through the draft, and the Bears are without first- and fourth-round picks this year. They own second- and third-round picks, two in Round 5 and one in Round 6. It will be challenging to make a big impact with this draft class. There’s a level of irony to Pace talking about building through the draft when he has been so quick to deal away draft capital.

McCaskey can’t go from talking about the collaboration by both men last January to placing all the blame on Nagy and his staff in one year, can he? That’s why it feels like keeping Pace doesn’t add up.

The mobility, the arm strength, the deep-ball accuracy — there’s an abundance of physical talent, a greater package than likely any quarterback to come before him in franchise history.

The hope is a season of experience combined with a new coaching staff will turn Fields into a completely different quarterback. Recall, this was the same thing the Bears thought about Mitch Trubisky back in January 2018.

Fields needs to emerge as the rare example of a quarterback who got significant playing time in his rookie season (10 starts), struggled and then emerged as a franchise-type passer. Plenty of folks like to mention Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions as a rookie in 1998, but he also threw 26 touchdown passes. Fields finished the season with seven touchdowns, 10 interceptions — and he also fumbled 12 times, losing five of them. He completed 58.9% of his passes and missed five of the final seven games, two with a rib injury, two with an ankle injury and the last one with COVID-19.

“He’s got high-end talent,” Pace said on the WBBM pregame show. “He’s got tremendous upside. But I think from just being around him throughout the year, you learn about his confidence, his steadiness in adversity, his football IQ and just how well he has been able to respond when we kept putting more and more on his plate. I think that bodes well.

“I like the quarterback environment that he was in this year as a rookie, the coaches around him, but I think really significant is the two veteran, accomplished players around him with Andy Dalton and Nick Foles. You are always going to be yourself as a player, but I think he picked up different things from their game, just with the preparation habits and study habits, and those things will help him long term. He responded to adversity, I thought, in the Pittsburgh game and he had those moments. But it’s really encouraging just to see the progress he has made from the first time he stepped in the huddle at rookie minicamp and then that’s just continued.

“He goes into this offseason as the starting quarterback and I think he’s shown when he has the opportunity, he excels as a player and as a leader.”

The signature moment during the fourth quarter in Pittsburgh — Fields took command of that game beginning late in the third quarter — came back on Nov. 8. That was more than two months ago. The Bears went into their bye after that and then prepared for a home game against the Baltimore Ravens. Fields had a disastrous Friday red-zone practice. It was a mess, concerning everyone involved, and an example of how difficult it is for rookie quarterbacks to sustain it from one game to the next, sometimes one series to the next.

“Justin is going to have a very bright future,” Nagy said with conviction after the Week 18 game.

Fields seemed unflappable during his rookie season. His teammates seem drawn to him. Those are positives. He was lauded coming out of Ohio State for being a hard worker. A coaching change could put him on a new trajectory.

I noted in this space after the season-opening loss to the Rams that from 2015-20 — a span of six drafts — there were 20 quarterbacks selected in Round 1. The head coach was fired after the rookie season of 10 of those quarterbacks. You think drafting a quarterback high buys a coach more time. That’s not always the case.

The best of the quarterbacks to see the coach fired after Year 1 is Justin Herbert. He stands above the rest. The next-best is probably Jared Goff, and if you’re aiming for the next Goff, your target is probably too low.

If Nagy is fired, the updated stats would be of the 25 quarterbacks drafted in Round 1 from 2015-21, 12 coaches were fired after the first year. It’s just another example of how difficult it is across the league to develop quarterbacks, the pressure, the stakes and the turnover.

The Bears are likely headed into a similar situation: After the rookie season for their first-round quarterback, they will be seeking a new coach.

This time around, I don’t think they will be as enamored by what offensive system a coach would bring with him or what experience he has calling plays. You have to believe the Bears prioritize the best leader, the candidate who can galvanize the building and then build a quality staff of assistants.

Does that mean it will be a coach with a defensive background? Not necessarily. The Bears need to find the best head coach candidate and not necessarily the best coordinator from the most successful team. In fairness, this is a trap a lot of teams fall into. This isn’t just a path the Bears have chosen.

That being said, here is a list of potential head coaching candidates (listed alphabetically), some of whom already have popped up on the radar of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who got a head start on the rest of the league after bouncing Urban Meyer.

Here is a list of potential candidates, in alphabetical order.

Quality coaching candidates will have just as many questions for the Bears as the process unfolds. I talked to a couple of veteran coaches and asked them what questions they would be armed with if they sat down with the Bears and whoever is running the search process.

“The first thing I would want to ask: Is this my building?” the first coach said. “Who is running this building? If I come in as the head coach, I want it to be my building and when I walk in every day, everyone looks at me as the most important man in this building as the prime decision maker. Am I going to have that power? I’m not saying I want power over the entire roster. That’s not where I’m going. But is this my football team?

“I think everyone right now in the NFL doesn’t know what that is in Chicago. What’s the power of command? What does Ted Phillips do? What does George McCaskey do? Am I going to have more than some input on the roster? Are we going to sit in these meetings when we talk about draft prospects and free agency and find guys that really fit my football team? I’m a little concerned right now who is making those decisions. That’s the No. 1 thing I would ask. I would be really nervous about working there if Ryan Pace is still there. He’s going to have a hand in putting together my football team? What has he done? I’m going to be coming in with no draft picks this year.

“I also have questions, a lot of questions, for them pertaining to my staff. Do I have full control of building my staff? I would tell them the Bears are in a really good spot right now. The Bears are a more attractive job than the Vikings if Minnesota fires Mike Zimmer. Because the Vikings are stuck with Kirk Cousins, and in Chicago, you are in the prime stages of Justin Fields’ developmental path and growth path and you’ve got him on a rookie contract. The time to win is now. There are obviously key pieces that are missing, maybe a bunch of key pieces. Everyone understands that.

“But am I going to be able to put together a staff to develop this team? Is it going to be totally up to me who is working in this building on the football side of things. Am I going to be forced to keep Sean Desai? I don’t know Sean Desai. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad coach at all, and he’s probably a good guy too. I want my own guys in there. I need to hire the best quarterback coach possible. I need to hire the best offensive line coach possible. I need to hire the best secondary coach possible. If that means we have to overpay for them, then we’re doing it.

“The offensive line is so poor and so poorly coached because they had the guy (Harry Hiestand) and they already fired him. Am I going to be in a position where if I have an offensive line coach I want, can I pay him like a coordinator if I need to in order to land him? Can I pay him that kind of salary? If they say no, then it’s not really my football team.

“I would say, ‘Every move we make in this building, whether it’s my assistant coaches, the GM, every move has to be built around the idea of making Justin Fields an All-Pro.’ If it’s not, what the hell are we doing here? Are we going to waste another opportunity? Is this going to be Mitch Trubisky Part 2 because that’s what it is going to be if it’s not done right with no draft capital this year.”

A second veteran coach weighed in on questions he would prepare for a meeting with the Bears.

“Who am I going to be working with?” he said. “That’s No. 1. I don’t want to be working with Ryan Pace. The track record isn’t there and you need to be tied together with the GM. The guys that are survivors in this business, the only reason they survive is because they are politicians.

“I want to find a coordinator that can come in and be best suited for Justin Fields’ skill set. I’m not going to try to make him Peyton Manning or Troy Aikman. I’m going to make Justin Fields Justin Fields. Just like Greg Roman has done. Those quarterbacks he’s had to work with (Colin Kaepernick, Lamar Jackson, Tyler Huntley), he’s tailored offenses around them and he’s done a really nice job doing that. You have to have the offense structured around the quarterback. Even if it’s a college coordinator, I am all for it. I’d bring Kevin Wilson in. He’s at Ohio State. Remember what he did at Indiana with nobodies on offense? Where he was before that? He was the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma. I’m not saying he has to be the guy, but I am saying I’d want to talk to people like that.

“You know why Philadelphia is winning games? The Eagles don’t try to make Jalen Hurts do things he can’t do. Justin Fields is a hell of a lot better than Jalen Hurts ever thought of being. So why try to make Justin Fields into Patrick Mahomes? Do the stuff he does well. Do it over and over again. Once somebody figures it out, tweak it a little bit. Not much. You don’t have to. But tweak it a little bit. Tie something else in. Let him grow. You don’t have to have the guru of all quarterback coaches. You have to have a really good coordinator that is going to structure the offense around what you have and not try to make everything fit into his system. Make your system fit the parts that you have. Get the most out of your players. Be smart.”

Ryan Pace is the third GM to work under Chairman George McCaskey during McCaskey’s 11-year run in that role. Two league executives offered some key questions they would have for McCaskey and whoever is involved in the search if they met with the Bears.

“You need to know exactly what you are able to do from a staffing standpoint with every function of the football operation side of things,” the first executive said, “because you can’t come into a situation where you are forced to keep any single individual, and certainly you can’t be told you have to keep everybody.

“These issues are not just at the top. It’s not just Ryan Pace. It’s not just Matt Nagy. It’s a culture issue, and the way you change culture is first you bring in someone that can set a new culture at the top and then that person has to be able to support the structure with people that can execute the culture and live the culture, and that comes with trust and familiarity and at least cohesion on thoughts for where to take things.

“You have to be able to build the culture, and that starts with acquiring the right people. That is way more common on the coaching side than the scouting side or the GM side. There are lot of people with the Bears that have been there a very long time. That doesn’t mean they are inadequate, but it certainly means some of them are.

“With coaching, it’s almost understood if the head coach goes, almost everyone goes with the exception of one or two assistants. That’s happened in almost every regime that the Bears have turned over in the past few cycles. With the GM side, that hasn’t been the case and it’s been the opposite — one or two go and not one or two stay. There are other departments, too, not just scouting.

“I think the issue with the Bears is probably even more widespread than football. It’s culture that impacts the entire building, and that doesn’t have to be done overnight but the GM has to be able to have an influence on the entire culture of the building. A strong GM candidate coming in there needs to feel comfortable that they’re going to be able to do that. That’s going to be based on how they feel the conversation goes with George, with Ted (Phillips), whoever else they are meeting with.

“I don’t know exactly what questions you ask to get there. You would have to put thought into that, but you need to make sure you can influence the entire culture of the building because that is where it starts.”

A second executive weighed in on what questions he would want answered right away.

“What’s the structure? I want to know what the structure is first,” he said. “I want to know who I am dealing with, who I need to report to. If there are layers between me and the owner, I don’t want that. There are too many times the message gets lost in translation and someone between you always has an agenda.

“Let’s say you are out on the road scouting. If you’re going to leave somebody in the building while you’re gone, you’re going to leave someone like your assistant GM or director of player personnel. You have to be able to trust that guy or those guys, but if you’ve got somebody in between you and the owner, they’re trying to make hay for themselves while you’re gone. That’s just the way the world works. But if you have somebody on your side that is watching the corners for you, at least they can say, ‘Look, dude, this is happening while you’re gone. You need to nip this in the bud.’ If you don’t have that in place, you’ve got a problem.

“My next question would be what role am I going to have in the coaching search? You want it to be somebody you are comfortable with. You don’t want it to be an arranged marriage with some cat you don’t know at all. I’m not saying you have to have ties with the coach, but you have to be comfortable ego-wise. If I am with somebody, I don’t need choice of the 53-man roster. That’s the biggest overblown crock of (bull) that I have ever heard. Because if you choose the 53, when the head coach goes to the game he chooses the 48 that actually have a uniform. So, don’t you need to work together to carry 53 that you both like?

“That’s what I am saying. You don’t have to be best friends. You have to be able to say to one another, ‘Hey, that’s messed up.’ You need to have thick skin because really you should be tied together. That’s because as soon as things go wrong, guys start tossing each other under the bus. That’s easy to do when you don’t know someone. Real easy.”

The rule, which was adopted in 2003 after a recommendation from the Workplace Diversity Committee, has been expanded recently and now includes general manager (and equivalent front-office positions), head coach and coordinator hires.

The league has tweaked the rule over the years. In October, the NFL changed it to require that teams interview a minimum of two external minority candidates for GM/executive of football operations and all coordinator roles. That was the guideline for head coaching vacancies — and now there’s more uniformity.

It’s important to keep in mind during the COVID-19 climate, teams must conduct an in-person interview with at least one external minority candidate for GM and head coach openings. Interviews for coordinator and lower-level front-office positions can be conducted virtually.

George McCaskey is currently a member of the Workplace Diversity Committee.

There are the usual home and away dates with the NFC North foes. And then it’s a great slate for Bears fans who live on the East Coast, with road games at the Patriots, Giants, Jets and Falcons. The Bears also will play the Cowboys on the road.

Visiting Soldier Field will be the Eagles, Washington (which reportedly will have a new team name Feb. 2), Bills, Dolphins, Texans and 49ers.

The schedule usually isn’t released until April. It sure looks like an easier schedule than the one the Bears just finished. That’s seven games against 2021 playoff teams when you count the Packers twice. Counting the Packers twice, they played eight games this year against 2020 playoff teams.

Tight end J.P. Holtz, offensive lineman Alex Bars, running back Ryan Nall and cornerback Teez Tabor will be restricted free agents. I highly doubt any of them will be tendered RFA offers. It’s possible they could return, but it would be for the minimum or close to it.

Offensive linemen Sam Mustipher and Lachavious Simmons are exclusive-rights free agents, meaning they can be retained for the minimum.

The UFAs by position (starters in bold):

The Bears have to completely rebuild the receiver position with Darnell Mooney the only building block currently under contract.

The offensive line is the next position of focus. Will the Bears pursue Daniels, who could command $7 million per season (perhaps more) in a new deal? What will the new coaching staff want to do with Teven Jenkins and Larry Borom? The Bears could kick one of them inside and add two tackles.

The defensive line will need an infusion of talent. Hicks, 32, was angling for a lucrative new contract and that didn’t happen. He missed 20 of the last 49 regular-season games and might have to sign a one-year deal with incentives somewhere. Nichols has been steady and should have a solid market.

There’s a decent chance the Bears cut ties with nose tackle Eddie Goldman because he is scheduled to earn $8.86 million in 2022 with a cap hit of $11.8 million, and shedding him would create another need on the defensive front.

The Bears will have to draft or sign a linebacker to play next to Roquan Smith. Expect Danny Trevathan to be released.

Houston-Carson has been a valuable player on special teams and has proved versatile in the secondary, so he should draw interest. Maybe he gets re-signed. The Bears will need multiple cornerbacks, at least one safety and have to figure out what they want to do with two-thirds of the special teams operation as only kicker Cairo Santos is under contract.

10a. One offseason story that will have a major impact on the Bears is something those at Halas Hall have positively zero control over.

The Bears, along with the Lions and Vikings, are as eager as any teams in the league to see what happens in Green Bay with quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who is the favorite to win his fourth MVP award.

Scoff if you like, but the future of the 38-year-old quarterback has a huge impact on the ability of the other teams in the division to challenge the Packers. As long as Rodgers calls Lambeau Field home, Green Bay will be the team to beat in the NFC North. The 38-year-old has shown no signs of diminishing skills and he’s actually getting better with more experience — finishing this season with 4,115 yards passing, 37 touchdowns, four interceptions and a 111.9 rating while completing 68.9% of his passes.

There is no need to rehash Rodgers’ dominance over the Bears — and the rest of the division for that matter. He said recently he’s not going to drag out a decision on his future, and it certainly looks as if there’s a better chance he will continue his career with the Packers than it did over the summer, when he was in a standoff with the team.

The Packers could trade Rodgers, but that seems as if it would be a last-resort move for GM Brian Gutekunst after 2020 first-round pick Jordan Love struggled in his lone start in Kansas City when Rodgers was sidelined on the reserve/COVID-19 list. If the Packers don’t deal Rodgers, they would have to sign him to a contract extension because he’s under contract for only one more year with a salary-cap hit of $46.1 million, a crippling figure for a team in a crunch that also has to find a way to keep wide receiver Davante Adams.

If Rodgers exits Green Bay — and that is a big IF — the division would be totally up for grabs. The NFC North could quickly become the worst division in football too. The playing field would be instantly leveled and the Packers would be forced to find out how the majority of the league lives from year to year without a franchise quarterback. Don’t underestimate the significance of this story as it plays out.

10b. Here’s a sign of the COVID-19 times: The Bears had 18 players on their practice squad before the Week 1 opener (two were signed and released before the first game), and 14 of them went on to either spend time on the 53-man roster or be flexed to the active roster.

The Bears had 34 players on the practice squad at some point during the season, and 24 spent at least one game on the active roster. The Bears had 33 players spend at least one week on the practice squad during the 2020 season.

The NFL voted to expand the developmental squad to 12 players in 2020 and 2021 before jumping to 14 in 2022. But to give teams added flexibility during the pandemic, they were given 16 practice squad slots the last two seasons.

Of the 24 players who went from the practice squad this year to the active roster, 21 appeared in a game — running backs Ryan Nall and Artavis Pierce; wide receivers Rodney Adams, Isaiah Coulter, Dazz Newsome and Nsimba Webster; offensive lineman Dieter Eiselen; defensive linemen Margus Hunt, LaCale London and Damion Square; outside linebackers Bruce Irvin, Sam Kamara, Ledarius Mack, Cassius Marsh and Charles Snowden; inside linebacker Josh Woods; and defensive backs Thomas Graham Jr., Michael Joseph, Thakarius Keyes, Teez Tabor and Dee Virgin.

By comparison, 10 of the 33 players on the 2020 practice squad appeared in a game.

Here are total practice squad numbers during the last seven seasons under GM Ryan Pace:

Look for a good handful of the players finishing the season on the practice squad to sign reserve/future contracts in the coming days.

10c. When a coaching staff turns over, there is often an assistant or maybe even a couple who fill a role for the new staff. You shouldn’t be surprised if you recognize a coach or two on what will almost certainly be a new staff. Defensive coordinator Sean Desai, special teams coordinator Chris Tabor, tight ends coach Clancy Barone and outside linebackers coach Bill Shuey all can point to positive developments by their units this season.

10d. Darnell Mooney’s big game — 12 receptions for 126 yards — pushed him to 1,055 yards for the season, the first Bears draft pick to top 1,000 receiving yards since Alshon Jeffery in 2013.

10e. The Bears surrendered seven sacks, and it only seemed like every one occurred on fourth down. That pushed the season total to 58. The only time the Bears have surrendered more sacks was in 2004, when they allowed 66.

10f. I noted in this space two weeks ago, coming out of the win in Seattle, that there was chatter Notre Dame would hire former Bears offensive line coach Harry Hiestand. That is reportedly close to happening.

The Bears paid Hiestand for the last two years after he was fired following the 2019 season. It will be good to see him getting back in the game; he had a remarkable run the last time he worked for the Irish.

10g. Thank you for reading this season.