Tight end Trey Burton signed with the Bears after helping the Eagles to a Super Bowl win last February and that means moving from the top of the league to a team that finished 5-11 last year.
While those are very different circumstances, Burton doesn’t feel like he’s in a totally unfamiliar situation. During an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio on Monday, Burton said that he sees things in the Bears that remind him of where the Eagles were heading into last season.
“There are a ton of similarities,” Burton said. “You look at Philly two years ago, the majority of our games we lost by less than a touchdown. If you look at Chicago last year as well, there’s a good amount of games that they lost. It’s just getting over that hump. You gotta be able to win the close games and here’s so many small detail things that happen in order for you to lose those games.”
The Bears lost six games by eight points or less last season while finishing last in the NFC North and the Eagles had six such losses while finishing last in the NFC East in 2016. They also have a quarterback drafted second overall in Mitchell Trubisky to go with Carson Wentz in Philly and the hope in Chicago is that Trubisky can make a similar jump to the one Wentz took before getting hurt in 2017.
One significant difference is that the Bears have a first-year head coach in Matt Nagy while 2017 was Doug Pederson’s second year in Philly, but that continuity didn’t have many people picking the Eagles to wind up as champions when last season got underway. That doesn’t mean the Bears are destined for Atlanta next February, of course, but better days may not be too far away if Burton’s right about the similarities of the situations.