TRESTMAN HAS BEARS ON CUSP OF PLAYOFFS

LAKE FOREST, Ill. – The Chicago Bears let a chance to wrap up the NFC North slip away. No sense dwelling on it now.

Coach Marc Trestman would just as soon forget about what happened at Philadelphia on Sunday and focus on this week’s game against Green Bay.

A win or a tie would put the Bears in the playoffs for just the second time in seven years and take the sting off the 54-11 pounding they absorbed from the Eagles.

“I’ve got to be the voice of reason,” Trestman said on Monday. “I’ve got to see the big picture. Every coach handles themselves differently in these situations, and there’s no right way to do it for coaches because they all handle them differently. This is the way we’ve done it, trying to maintain some practicality works in this case.”

The Bears looked like they were about to bow out of the race following that demoralizing overtime loss at Minnesota three weeks ago. But after dropping six of nine, they jumped back to the top of the division with back-to-back wins over Dallas and Cleveland.

On Sunday, everything fell in line for them – until they actually lined up on the field.

With Green Bay losing to Pittsburgh and the New York Giants eliminating Detroit from contention before kickoff, Chicago had a chance to lock up the division. Instead, it comes down to this week’s finale at Soldier Field.

“We’ve got a tremendous opportunity on Sunday,” Trestman said. “As I said to the players during the week and I said yesterday, if we walked into here in the locker room in April in the first OTA and said we’d be playing for the AFC North – NFC North – on the last day of the season, we would have taken it. Now we’ve got that opportunity. We’ve got to have good amnesia.”

Against Philadelphia, the Bears got mauled from the start.

In one positive from Sunday’s game, the Bears came out healthy.

“That’s a great thing at this point, that we came out clean,” Trestman said.

(Associated Press)