Could Sunday be a turning point for rebuilding Bears?

The Bears have been down for most of the decade. They’ve been out of playoff contention for the better part of three seasons.

It’s been a long, difficult road for the team and their fans. Bad coaches, bad moves, bad players, bad results. It has been frustrating and very ugly at times, but the tide could be turning.

For the first time in years the Bears have some hope and they have some players worth watching.

Two seasons ago, as the Bears slogged through a 5-11 campaign, there became fewer and fewer reasons to tune in and watch every week.

The QB was the same, the players around him were mostly the same and the results were mostly the same: It was all mostly bad and resulted in losses.

Coming in to this season, it didn’t appear things were going to get much better: injuries were piling up, the quarterback at the time, Mike Glennon, really didn’t establish himself as a huge upgrade over the departed Jay Cutler and conservative gameplans meant the Bears played not to lose.

While not all of those things have changed, the QB has and Mitch Trubisky, even with just 48 attempts to his stat line, represents hope. The intrigue around him alone is enough to make even the most apathetic fan from a couple years ago to turn on a game.

The defense, which had some promise but lots of injuries and questions, has suddenly blossomed into a top unit in the league. That was the hope coming into the season but fans have become wary and cynical of what they have seen and more than a few were pensive about the Bears being able to play to their potential.

Now the Bears have won as many games as they did in all of last season and they are not even halfway through this season.

The team has a decent chance to take a big step in their rebuilding process Sunday. After stacking together two straight wins and breaking a long road losing streak in the process, the Bears can get back to .500 Sunday.

While that might be a small accomplishment, they haven’t been .500 in season since Week 6 in 2014 when they beat Atlanta on the road to get to 3-3.

Since then, they have had four chances, outside of Week 2, to get to the .500 mark and lost them all. A win Sunday and a .500 record would be quite a feat for this upstart team. Going into a bye week it could be especially big.

The playoffs might still be a pipe dream but winning builds confidence and this is the next step in being able to put the long doldrums of the rebuild behind them and truly start to look to the future and bigger things.

It could all start Sunday.

Am I putting too much in to Sunday’s game or could this really signal the turn around?