This late-night Sunday Surmising entry focuses on Sunday Night Football as the San Francisco 49ers escaped the Chicago Bears, 42-38, in a crazy game that went down to the final play. Our two prior looks at the Bears were accurate in mathematical analysis, but that doesn’t always play out the way it “should” in terms of probabilities—which are just that: merely probable. Chicago almost beat the math again tonight.

Coming into Sunday evening, the sabermetrics suggested that the 49ers—even with their myriad injuries this season on both sides of the ball—would be seven-point favorites against the Bears on a neutral field. Since this game was played at Levi’s Stadium in Silicon Valley, that gave San Francisco another three-point edge on paper. So, what happened, naturally? Chicago scored a defensive touchdown on the very first play.

Yeah, that’s what you call luck. The Bears have backed into the NFC North Division title despite being the third-best team in the division, sabermetrically: the 8-8 Detroit Lions are fourth in the conference, and the 9-6-1 Green Bay Packers are sixth in the conference. Chicago is seventh, but it still had 11 victories coming into tonight’s game against the easiest schedule in the conference. Again, this is what we call a luck factor.

Like last week at home against the Packers, the Bears knocked the Green Bay starting quarterback out of the game in the second period with an illegal hit, and they still needed a last-minute TD drive in the fourth quarter to tie the game before winning it in overtime. What kind of garbage is that? Well, it does fall into the luck category, as the Packers were then missing their best player on both offense and defense. Hmmm.

Tonight, the 49ers defense was missing two league-best players in defensive lineman Joey Bosa and linebacker Fred Warner. San Francisco seemingly could not stop much at all, even though its offense was lighting it up. And in handing the Bears a free TD on the first play of the game via a tipped-pass interception return, the 49ers made the only real mistake by either team in this crazy contest. Luck? Yes.

So, S.F. spotted Chicago a 7-0 lead before the Bears offense ever took the field, but the 49ers were able to hang on and win the game late. Even with the gift-wrapped lead, Chicago wasn’t good enough in this game to beat San Francisco. Again, the Bears have seven wins this year by seven points or less; they’ve played the easiest schedule in the conference; and they’re the third-best team, in their division, based on sabermetrics.

Yeah, Chicago is going to the playoffs, and that’s all that matters. We didn’t think that would happen a month ago; we were wrong there, but we were not wrong about the math. Sooner or later, luck runs out, and the math does lay out the realities in front of us. You can only dodge the math for so long; eventually, it will catch up to you. It’s rare that it does not in the same season; remember the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs, really.

And perhaps recognize the 2025 Kansas City Chiefs are what the 2026 Chicago Bears will become (in time).