Chicago Bears are well equipped to ignore distractions

The Chicago Bears are inside a week until training camp starts and it could not come soon enough.

For a variety of reasons, this offseason has felt like an eternity for the Chicago Bears and fans alike. Perhaps it could be because of the painful way in which last season ended. The Bears exceeded even the wildest expectations, but that didn’t make the home loss to the Philadelphia Eagles any easier to swallow.

Another reason this offseason has dragged on has been the constant stream of verbal and written nonsense emanating from the mouths, pens, and keyboards of pundits and pretenders.

Whether it was overvaluing the loss of Adrian Amos, or stating the team had the worst offseason in the league, or the variety of ratings (ProFootball Focus, Madden, or otherwise) of the players — especially the over-the-top disrespect of Mitchell Trubisky. As an aside, you’d be best served just ignoring Trubisky commentary. The majority of it comes from people with an inherent bias — those that cover or are fans of other NFC North teams and those who are looking to validate their pre-draft opinion that Trubisky is not good. Both of those groups have a rooting interest in seeing him fail.

Speaking of ignoring the noise, while it may be difficult for fans to let it go, the team should have no such issue and it all starts at the top.

Matt Nagy has complete control of this team and has set the tone from the very first day. His lead-by-example approach, combined with the way he treats his players, has garnered the respect of the team. So when he preaches for the team to be “obsessed”,  the players listen.

The team also takes its cues from Trubisky who is about as obsessed as they come. So much so, that Nagy had to encourage him to spend some of his downtime this offseason focusing on non-football things because he’s so immersed in football.

But Trubisky isn’t the only one. Just about every player on the team appears incredibly locked in and focused on one goal. Since the 2018 season ended, the Bears have had their eyes on one goal — to win the Super Bowl — and nothing has caused them to deviate from that goal.

In order to win a Super Bowl, you need a quality roster with depth, good health, a little luck, and the ability to focus on the task at hand. Teams with players who are persuaded by the outside noise can struggle, as the noise becomes the focus rather than the goals of the team.

However, the 2019 Bears should not have any such problems. They don’t care about the noise because they have faith in themselves and their abilities. They know who they are as a team and how good they can be this year, and no rating or pundit’s opinion is going to change that.