In his long career, Tom Brady has never fallen to the Chicago Bears.
Nobody would consider the Chicago Bears to be a bad organization. That being said, when it comes to matchups against the greatest quarterback of all time, the team in the Windy City hasn’t had any luck so far. I don’t know if I’m ready to call Tom Brady Chicago’s kryptonite, but the guy has cracked the code to this defense.
Fortunately for Chicago, they have only come up against Brady five times during his long tenure in this league. In those five matchups though, Brady has dropped at least 33 points in four of them. This leads us to the main question in Week 5: will Chuck Pagano be a rare Chicago defensive coordinator who will figure out how to stop him?
There’s one other important distinction between this game and all of the others. In this Thursday Night Football game, the Hall-of-Famer won’t have his partner and coach in Bill Belichick by his side.
Unfortunately for Chicago, Tom Brady’s slow start in Tampa Bay only lasted a couple of weeks. In his first two games, he threw for three touchdowns and three interceptions and looked like he had just been a system quarterback in New England after all. But in a sudden and impressive resurgence, he put together two-straight MVP-caliber games against the Broncos and the Chargers.
Do the Chicago Bears even have a chance of winning this game?
These two teams will be trending in opposite directions and Chicago could not have asked for a worse week to see that beautiful jawline and butt chin taking snaps under center. I do think Chicago will slow him down a little bit, but I don’t see any way that the defense stops him enough to make up for the lackluster offense that has seemingly been around since the inception of the team.
While I don’t think the Bears will win, I actually think this team has a better shot than most people might expect. In three of five matchups, the game has been decided by a touchdown or less. Granted, you can never be comfortable against Tom Brady in a close game, but this Chicago team has played extremely well in those situations.
That, combined with the sheer star power on this defense, will make for an interesting game. This will be a matchup that you’ll want to tune in for during the 4th quarter. Or not; if the Chicago Bears start to trail early, I don’t see this one swinging back in their favor as it did against the Lions and Falcons. Regardless, it’ll be a telling game for Matt Nagy and his team.