CHICAGO (WGN) — The lead-up to Sunday afternoon for Bears fans felt like one of those highly-anticipated Christmas mornings growing up.

You know what I’m talking about?

You’re at the peak age of belief in Santa Claus and months prior, your parents asked what you wanted for Christmas, and something immediately came to mind.

Maybe it was a bike, guitar, designer pair of pants, or the latest video game system. Whatever it was, the thought of getting your hands on it instantly caused your heart rate to spike in excitement.

For me, the year was 2002, and that highly sought-after present was the PlayStation 2.

Growing up in a blue-collar household, my parents couldn’t afford the PS2 at launch in 2000, which was priced at around $600 and was hard to get ahold of anyway.

By Christmas time two years later, Sony made a bold move and slashed the price of the PS2 by two-thirds (down to $200), and amped up production, making it much more affordable for Middle America.

When I wrote the gaming system down at the top of my Christmas list that year and my mom told me Santa might be able to make it happen, I already knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before (spoiler alert, I didn’t).

I laid in bed for what felt like an eternity on Christmas Eve night, into the early morning hours of Christmas. Anticipation floated at an all-time high in my six-year-old mind, where I wondered what it would be like to finally tear through the wrapping paper and plug in that sweet puppy to play for the first time.

For Bears fans Sunday, Caleb Williams was their PS2, and my anticipation to play the latest version of Madden, was their anticipation to see what it would be like to finally have a quarterback who could be the one – The one who bucks the Bears curse of bad quarterback play and vaults the franchise back into playoff contention.

The only difference between me Christmas morning with that PS2, and Bears fans watching Williams make his first NFL debut, was that the PS2 lived up to the hype.

The good news though, is the Bears won, and the defense and special teams lived up to their billing.

Williams completed 14 of 29 passes for 93 yards and became the first quarterback taken first overall to win their NFL debut since David Carr back in 2002, while the Bears became the first team in NFL history to win a game with fewer than 150 total yards on offense after facing a 17-point deficit.

GAME RECAP: Caleb Williams has a rough debut but gets bailed out by Bears’ defense in 24-17 win over Titans

Behind the leg of Cairo Santos, the special teams heroics of Daniel Hardy and Jonathan Owens, and Tyrique Stevenson housing an absolutely horrendous pass from Will Levis, the Bears delivered 24 unanswered points to ensure a comeback victory that didn’t feature a single touchdown from Chicago’s offense, which brings me to my point.

Williams is a rookie and he’s going to struggle early on. It’s natural and it’s okay.

The key to keeping their ship afloat while Williams gets his sea legs will be the Bears staying true to their age-old identity — suffocating defense — and relying on the star no one seems to be talking about on offense.

D’Andre Swift.

General manager Ryan Poles was not shy about pulling in as much talent as possible to surround Williams with over the offseason, and head coach Matt Eberflus has been adamant about Williams relying on the veterans around him from the get-go.

“He’s got teammates that believe in him and trust him and know him, that he can lean in on as we go through this week and get better,” Eberflus said Sunday.

Rome Odunze week-to-week after spraining MCL

The Bears traded for Keenan Allen, drafted Rome Odunze, signed Swift, Gerald Everett and brought in a gaggle of new offensive linemen to give Williams the best supporting cast a No. 1 overall pick has arguably ever had, and the best way for Williams to lean on all that talent is for the coaching staff to do what helps rookie quarterbacks the most.

Take the pressure off the QB and center the offense around Swift and a good run game.

Swift was selected to his first Pro Bowl a season ago in what was his best statistical season to date. The former Georgia Bulldog ran the ball 229 times for 1,049 yards on the ground to go with 39 catches for 214 yards as a receiver out of the backfield, where he accounted for six total touchdowns along the way.

Historically speaking, when the Bears won ballgames, they had an offense based around a back that put up numbers comparable to the stats Swift had last year, and a defense that left the opposition black and blue on the way to being among the NFL’s elite.

Since the turn of the millennia, Five Chicago teams have gone on to win eleven or more games, with those teams doing so in 2001, 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2018.

The common threads among those five teams were they each had a running game on offense that featured a back who put up over 1,000 yards from scrimmage, and a defense that finished top five in the league in points allowed at season’s end.

In 2001, Anthony Thomas ran for 1,183 yards on 278 carries, with 178 receiving yards on 22 catches, while the Bears defense held opponents to just 12.7 points per game – Tops in the NFL.

From 2005-06, Thomas Jones was the Bears’ bell-cow on offense, where he ran the ball 610 times for 2,545 yards and 15 touchdowns over two seasons, where Chicago ranked first (2005 – 12.6) and third (2006 – 15.9) in points allowed per game.

Matt Forte notched 1,616 yards from scrimmage (1,069 rushing, 547 receiving) in 2010, opposite of a defense that gave up 17.9 points per game, which ranked fourth in the NFL that year.

In 2018, the Bears had the two-headed monster of Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen, who combined for 2,249 scrimmage yards and 17 total touchdowns, while the defense held opposing offenses to a NFL-low 17.7 points per game.

The only things that remain to be seen are if the defense can continue to carry over their performances from the back-half of last season, and Shane Waldron, a historically pass-happy offensive coordinator, is willing to ditch a pass-centric offense for the time being, in favor of a more rookie quarterback friendly run-first scheme that doesn’t put the onus of winning ballgames squarely on the defense.

When he was the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator in 2023, he adjusted the Seahawks offensive scheme to lean more into the passing game, and Seattle’s offense ended the year ranked fifth in passing play percentage, throwing the ball a whopping 62.7% of the time.

The Bears offensive snap counts from Sunday against the Tennessee Titans followed those trends, with 35 of Williams’ 56 offensive snaps ending in pass plays (62.5%), according to Pro Football Focus.

When Waldron was first introduced as the new offensive coordinator for the Bears all the way back in late February, his points of emphasis were creativity and cohesion at the time, with buzz words like “adaptability” and “adjustments” being frequent flyers in answers to questions from the local media.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Shane Waldron’s introductory press conference

“You want to be creative, and you want to be curious to really make the scheme go and make it go with the skillset we have, and that’s important on offense and defense,” Eberflus said of Waldron and Eric Washington at the time. “That’s why these two men are sitting here today. Adaptable. You have to be able to adapt. In-game adaptability. You have to be able to adapt to in-game tactics.”

Essentially speaking, Waldron left the sense his primary goal was to put players in the right situations to succeed.

In order for the Bears to succeed, it’s time for them to put Swift at the center of their offense, as Williams works to become the quarterback many expect him to be.

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