How I fell in love with the Chicago Bears

Football has been my passion for most of my life. I have liked it ever since I was really young but it didn’t become my full passion until 6th grade. I always liked it and thought it was cool the years before that but at the age of 11 years old I fell in love with football one Sunday morning and never looked back. So let me take you back to a simpler time back when I wasn’t even out of Elementary school and already had a main passion for something. 

It was the 2016 NFL season one of the best years for football and one of the best years in sports. The NFL season was a couple games in so this was around week 3 or 4 of the NFL season. The Chicago Bears were playing on a Sunday morning against the Indianapolis Colts. I had already watched the previous Bears games before this one and decided to watch this one as well when I woke up. The Bears were always my team but my love for them didn’t spark until I turned on this game. I walked into my garage turned on the game and was watching it how I normally would.  

But when I was watching it I noticed myself focusing on the game way harder when a rookie running back by the name of Jordan Howard was shredding up the game. The Bears that season had a running back named Jeremy Langford but he was injured so they had no choice but to put in rookie Jordan Howard to replace him. No one really knew much of him since he was a backup rookie but he showed everyone who he was that game by destroying the Colts defense and showing a young 11-year-old me how Bears running backs play. Howard plays running back just how a classic Bears running back would. Plays strong while bashing threw the offensive line. He did a lot of that in this game and broke free a lot of plays and when I saw him do all of that I was hooked to the Chicago Bears forever. The Bears did lose that game but after what I saw in that game the Bears were all I could think about. 

I started buying their clothing, watching highlights of old games, doing research on them everything that I did from that point on was all about the Chicago Bears. Yes, Jordan Howard made me like them but he made me love that whole entire team. That season I knew every single Bears player on the roster, what college they went to, their stats I had everything down with that team. The team that season being fully honest was not that good. They were one of the worst teams in football but it didn’t matter to me at that young age. I looked up to every player on that team and still do to this day. I would go sleepless the night before every Bears game off of being excited. All through the school week, I would be counting how closer I am within days on when the Bears would next play with how much I loved them. 

I still love the Chicago Bears to this day and I always will. I love my story of how I become in love with this team and will never forget my story with how loving it is. I always look back on that 2016 Bears team and remember all of the players that were a part of that roster because they are no longer a part of the roster anymore and I’m one of the few to remember them. I look back to that time and get such a nostalgic feeling thinking about how great it was for a kid at such a young age to like something that much.