Kevin Byard remembers his first playoff game. It was Jan. 6, 2018. Byard’s Tennessee Titans headed to Arrowhead Stadium to face the Kansas City Chiefs.

“I just remember going out for pregame warmup, and it was like the lights felt a little brighter, the sidelines were a lot more packed with media and all these different people out there,” the Chicago Bears veteran safety said this week. “The intensity level just ramps up.”

Among players on the 2025 Bears, Byard is one of the more experienced when it comes to postseason play. In his 10-year NFL career, the 32-year-old Byard has made the playoffs five times — four with the Titans and once with the Philadelphia Eagles. The 2019 Titans reached the AFC championship game after upsetting the No. 1-seeded Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round. Byard had an interception against the Ravens.

The Bears signed Byard as a free agent in March 2024, hoping his veteran leadership and experience would be the right addition for a team with a lot of young talent. Byard was the model of consistency long before he arrived in Chicago, but that has continued since he showed up at Halas Hall. He has appeared in 164 consecutive regular-season games with 155 straight starts over 10 years. His teammates voted him a captain during both of his seasons in Chicago. He led the NFL with seven interceptions this season and earned his third Pro Bowl nod.

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Byard has been everything the Bears hoped he would be when they signed him to a two-year, $15 million contract nearly two years ago.

And yet, it feels like it was all building toward this moment.

The Bears will begin what they hope is a long playoff run with Saturday night’s wild-card round matchup against the Green Bay Packers.

“We’re mentally prepared to play for five more weeks,” coach Ben Johnson said.

In a lot of ways, the Bears feel like a team that arrived early. They won five games a year ago and brought in a new coach in Johnson, who has galvanized the city. This 11-6 season blew away all expectations.

But make no mistake, the Bears are not thinking about the bright future ahead. They are thinking about winning right here, right now. It has been five years since the franchise’s last playoff game, seven since the last home playoff game at Soldier Field and 15 since the last playoff victory.

Guard Joe Thuney (62) celebrates after a Bears touchdown against the Raiders on Sept. 28, 2025 , at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

This moment is why a team brings in a veteran such as Byard. It’s why general manager Ryan Poles traded for guard Joe Thuney, who has 21 playoff games under his belt (tied for sixth-most among active players). It’s why Poles signed guys such as linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards and doled out some of the franchise’s biggest contracts to veterans such as receiver DJ Moore, defensive end Montez Sweat and cornerback Jaylon Johnson.

If the Bears make a playoff run, they almost certainly will need contributions from unexpected places. Every playoff run has its unsung heroes. Thuney has played on four championship teams, two with the New England Patriots and two with the Chiefs. What did those teams have in common?

It comes back to selflessness.

“It doesn’t matter who gets the yards or touchdowns or who has good stats or who doesn’t,” Thuney, 33, said. “All that matters is that we want to win. It doesn’t matter how we win, what it looks like.”

All that may be true, but if the Bears make a run they’re going to need big-time contributions from their veterans, their highest-paid players and their premium draft picks.

All week at Halas Hall, the veterans have been stressing that nothing really has changed.

“Honestly, it feels like another week,” cornerback Jaylon Johnson said.

“I mean, pretty much the same,” Sweat said.

“It’s still 60 minutes, same football dimensions,” Thuney said. “So once you get in the rhythm of the game, kind of just go with it.”

‘You’re in the playoffs for a reason’

Bears tight end Cole Kmet catches a two-point conversion pass during the fourth quarter against the Lions on Jan. 4, 2026, at Soldier Field. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Cole Kmet remembers his first playoff game too.

It was his rookie season in 2020. The Bears lost the regular-season finale in Week 17 but still squeaked into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. That 2020 team struggled for much of the year, flip-flopping between quarterbacks Mitchell Trubisky and Nick Foles. At one point it lost six consecutive games but somehow finished 8-8 and made the postseason.

“I remember it being weird,” Kmet, 26, said. “As a rookie, you don’t really know this from that, and you’re 8-8, and there was, it felt like a lot of negative sentiment around the team at the time, even though we were going to the playoffs.”

The Bears lost 21-9 against the New Orleans Saints in a wild-card-round game, with their only touchdown coming on the final play of the game. The Bears haven’t been back to the playoffs since.

“I just look back on it, and you realize, first of all, you never take a playoff berth for granted,” Kmet said. “Maybe I did a little bit at the time.”

Kmet and kicker Cairo Santos are the only Bears remaining who played in that playoff game at the Superdome in New Orleans. Jaylon Johnson also was a rookie on the 2020 Bears but missed the game because of a shoulder injury.

Much has changed since then. There’s a new GM in town, and the Bears are two coaches removed from Matt Nagy. Foles, Andy Dalton, Justin Fields, Trevor Siemian, Nathan Peterman and Tyson Bagent all started games at quarterback between then and 2024, when the Bears selected Caleb Williams with the No. 1 pick in draft.

Poles has completely reworked the roster. Given all the turnover, this roster by and large has little playoff experience. None of the players who Poles drafted since taking over in 2022 has any playoff experience.

Asked about playing in his first playoff game in the aftermath of the Week 18 loss against the Detroit Lions, safety Jaquan Brisker’s eyes lit up.

“It’ll be loud, it’ll be rocking,” he said of the expected atmosphere at Soldier Field. “But don’t let the moment get too big.”

Bears coach Ben Johnson walks along the bench in the second quarter against the Lions at Soldier Field on Jan. 4, 2026. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

The Bears are taking on a Packers team they are intimately familiar with. These teams will meet for the third time in 35 days. The crowd was amped when they met on Dec. 20 at Soldier Field. For the first home playoff game in seven years, it should be amped again Saturday night.

When teams meet for a third time, they become desperate for any advantage. This is where both coaches, Ben Johnson on the Bears side and Matt LaFleur on the Packers side, can flex their creativity.

“You’re going to see something that’s an unscouted look,” Bears defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett said. “It always happens on both sides of the ball, even on special teams. It always happens when you get to this time of the year. So your fundamentals, your eyes, your technique have to come to play. You have to keep your composure because there’s going to be emotions.”

From the coaching staff, the message hasn’t changed. Any game, especially a big game, is about who can execute the fundamentals best.

“You just try to keep the main thing the main thing,” Sweat said. “All the outside factors and people that’s not in the building and the man in the arenas, those things really don’t matter. You just kind of focus on the game plan.”

Sweat will be playing in his second-career playoff game after reaching the postseason in 2020 with the Washington Commanders. The Bears acquired him at the trade deadline in 2023 and gave him a four-year, $98 million contract extension before he played a snap in Chicago. With a $25 million salary-cap hit in 2025, Sweat is also the highest-paid player on the team.

Bears defensive end Montez Sweat (98) pursues Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs in the second quarter Jan. 4, 2026, at Soldier Field. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Defensively, all eyes will be on him. As the Eagles demonstrated a year ago, a dominant defensive front can carry a team to a Super Bowl. The Bears, as a group, probably have a ways to go before they’re in that conversation.

As a defense, the 2025 Bears ranked 22nd among 32 teams with 35 sacks this season, and they ranked 27th with a 31.6% QB pressure rate. Sweat led the Bears with 10 sacks and 48 QB pressures. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, the Bears are 7-2 when Sweat records three or more QB pressures in a game.

The Bears defense has thrived off turnovers. But when the turnovers aren’t coming and the pass rush goes quiet, the defense is susceptible to giving up yards in big chunks. Heading into the playoffs, the Bears allowed 437.7 yards per game over their last three contests.

Garrett said he doesn’t think there’s any additional pressure on Sweat to perform in the postseason. He sees a guy who never gets too high after a win or too low after a loss. That approach, Garrett believes, will serve him well in the postseason.

“You’re in the playoffs for a reason,” Garrett said. “You don’t have to go and make a complete change to what you’re doing, but there is another level of focus that you need to go to because the intensity (goes up).”

‘We’re going to need all of our players’

Bears wide receiver DJ Moore (2) makes the game-winning touchdown catch in overtime against the Packers on Dec. 20, 2025, at Soldier Field. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Moore will surely remember his first playoff game. It will be Saturday.

Eight years, 131 regular-season games, 608 catches and 8,213 receiving yards into his NFL career, Moore will finally taste postseason football.

“It’s my first time in this thing too,” Moore said. “So I’m just going with the flow, working hard. Everything is, you can tell everything has been amped up, even our practice has been.”

Moore was sort of the linchpin to the Bears rebuild. When Poles traded the No. 1 draft pick in March 2023, the goal was to pick up future draft capital, but acquiring a veteran player who could help his team immediately was also a priority. The trade with the Carolina Panthers netted the future first-round pick that wound up becoming Williams, but it also gave the Bears a playmaker they saw as a part of their future.

Moore had a career-high 1,364 yards and eight touchdowns in 2023 with Fields at quarterback. His production has dipped since then, but that has coincided with an increase in weapons available to the Bears on offense.

For the first time since 2014, the Bears this season had four players surpass 600 receiving yards: Moore (682), Colston Loveland (713), Rome Odunze (661) and Luther Burden III (652). The 2014 and 2025 seasons are the only instances in the 106-year history of the franchise that has happened.

All four of them caught at least 40 passes. Seven Bears, if you add Kmet, D’Andre Swift and Olamide Zaccheaus, caught at least 30 passes.

“(It’s) open communication with those guys, being on the same page with them, training camp and all the tough days, those have been big for us,” Williams said. “And then the details have been, over the past couple weeks, have been better — of landmarks and assignments and spacing and routes and things like that. When all that comes together, it turns out to be pretty good.”

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Moore, a Panthers first-round draft pick in 2018, was a priority in that blockbuster 2023 trade. Loveland and Odunze were first-round draft picks. Burden went 39th overall, the seventh pick in the second round.

Add in a coach like Ben Johnson, who finds creative ways to spread the ball around, and you’ve got a balanced passing attack that ranked 10th with 225.1 passing yards per game.

“You’ve got to defend the entire field,” the coach said. “That’s the way we really wanted it. All these guys know that they’ll have plays in this week to make an impact on this game. Caleb’s job is to help distribute that football so they all get an opportunity to do that.”

The pressure and the scrutiny is going to be on Williams. That comes with the territory. But the second-year QB, who will be making his first postseason start, is not going to be alone out there.

“We’re going to need him at his best,” Ben Johnson said. “We’re going to need all of our players at their best. I’m hopeful we’re going to get that.”

Tribune reporter Phil Thompson contributed.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/09/chicago-bears-playoff-experience/