Remember that crossroads in the Bears season I wrote about three weeks ago? That fork in the road after two straight losses to the Texans and 49ers? Its turned into the fork thats hovering the Bears body of work for 2012.
The opportunity to deliver potential knockout punches to two teams trying to stay in the playoff picture started well enough at home against the Vikings. But the failure to lock down that home game with Seattle has given the Seahawks momentum (and now, the fifth seed in the NFC, ahead of the Bears), and carried over into the Minnesota rematch.
The trends certainly aren't encouraging. The Bears face an arch-rival Sunday they haven't been able to beat lately. Then there are the health issues that were compounded in that Seahawks game, which leads me into one particular moment we'll have to keep an eye on as a potential defining moment of the year.
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Chicago led Seattle 14-10 with just over a minute remaining, and had them facing 4th and 3 at the Bears' 48. They needed to top Russell Wilson and company, then take over, run the clock out and improve to 9-3. But Wilson completed a seven-yard pass to Zach Miller, and two plays later, they went ahead 17-14.
Fortunately (or was it, since they wound up losing anyway?), Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall worked their magic to set up the overtime-forcing field goal. Then came overtime.
Less than 2-12 minutes in, Tim Jennings suffered his shoulder injury, knocking him out of last week's game and probably this week's, too. Pro Bowl cornerback, gone.
Then, as Seattle's game-winning march continued, Brian Urlacher goes down for likely the rest of the regular season with his hamstring injury. That doesn't happen if he's not on the field for overtime - much less 10:36 of the final eleven minutes of the game.
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So without Jennings and Urlacher, and with a ninth win turned into a fourth loss, the Bears go up to Minnesota, and lose again. Would the momentum - and the presence of Jennings and Urlacher for the Minnesota game - have made a difference in that outcome last Sunday?
Even if they'd still lost, they'd be 9-4 and still have a shot at the division title with a win this weekend. Winning both of those games - with those two players still in the lineup - instead of a split the last two weeks provides an entirely different outlook.
There's no telling where fate and the health Gods would've taken the Bears if they'd closed the deal and stopped the Seahawks with just 1:11 remaining two Sundays ago. I've also been around long enough to know sometimes strange things happen to certain teams despite cruel twists of fate, when there's so much on the line.
At this very moment, the Bears are still a playoff team despite everything that's happened leading up to that Wilson-to-Miller connection. They can still wind up in the playoffs even if they lose again Sunday. But those three hours this weekend could well determine whether the Bears can overcome some of the odds now stacked against them, and get back on track from a single moment that may factor into multiple off-season decisions.