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Bears-49ers Preview
Everything you need to know before the Bears take on the 49ers on Sunday.
With a playoff berth secured and Chicago still vibrating from Caleb Williams’ overtime dagger against the Packers, the Bears head to Santa Clara this weekend carrying something they haven’t possessed in decades: legitimate January (and possibly February) aspirations.
Sunday night’s matchup against the 49ers presents more than just another primetime opportunity; it’s a chance to clinch the NFC North, reinforce their standing as one of the NFC’s true heavyweights, and continue the meteoric rise of a young quarterback who’s already altering the trajectory of the franchise.
Williams’ arrival has been loud, dramatic, and at times chaotic — but increasingly, it has felt inevitable. His 46-yard walk-off bomb to DJ Moore didn’t just beat Green Bay. It changed the conversation surrounding the Bears. It signaled a team capable of seizing moments rather than shrinking in them. It announced Williams as the kind of quarterback Bears fans have spent their entire lives watching from afar. And now, with two weeks left, the Bears can take the next step in that transformation. A win Sunday sends them home with a division crown and puts them firmly in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed—with a bit of help from the Carolina Panthers this week.
The personal stakes for Williams are just as significant. He is now 438 passing yards shy of Erik Kramer’s single-season franchise record (3,838), a mark that has stood untouched since 1995. Williams doesn’t need a statistical explosion to break it — just 220 yards per game over the final two contests. Given that he has thrown for more than 240 yards in consecutive cold-weather outings against elite defenses, it’s not hard to imagine him dismantling the record in the very stadium that will host Super Bowl LX. The poetic symmetry isn’t lost on anyone: The Bears are playing where they hope their season ends, with a quarterback writing a new chapter nearly every week.
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