Chicago Bears: Week 6 game balls after heartbreaker in Miami The streak continued Sunday Chicago Bears Hoodie , as the Chicago Bears failed to win a game coming out of the bye week for the fifth straight season. The roller-coaster ride of a game was probably one that was best to view as a fan outside of either team. Regardless, the Bears are now 3-2 as they head home to face a red hot 4-2 New England Patriots team. Even with a Packers win tonight, the Bears will hold the tie-breaker due to less games played, so for a fourth straight week, they’ll hold onto first place.While there was plenty of bad to go around in the 31-28 overtime lose, there was still plenty of good that happened Sunday afternoon. For more on who received Week 6’s game balls, let’s dive in. WR Taylor GabrielDouglas DeFelice-USA TODAY SportsWhen the Bears signed the 27-year-old back in March, most people believed his four-year, $26 million deal was an overpay. I’d be curious to see how many still feel the same after five games.Gabriel has been arguably their best receiver so far and continues to show the ability to stretch the field, which in turn has helped Trubisky’s big turnaround over the past two weeks (more on that in a few). On Sunday, the former Falcon broke the 100-yard mark for the second straight game with five catches for 110 yards. In those five catches were two deep balls, including a very impressive jump ball that the 5’8 receiver went up over a defensive back and pulled down. It’s becoming very clear that Gabriel’s role in this offense will continue to stay and could even grow as he and Trubisky gain more of a connection.Here’s an early season argument that could be made for Gabriel right now; he may have been the team’s best acquisition this off-season, not named Khalil Mack.Honorable Mention: QB Mitchell TrubiskySteve Mitchell-USA TODAY SportsSpeaking of the offense, Trubisky rebounded from a lackluster first half and finished the game 22/31 (71%) for 316 yards, three touchdowns and an interception.Now I’m not going to debate that his interception in the end zone could partially be blamed for them losing the game. But I will say this: The same people saying Trubisky didn’t have a good game because of the interception, are the same ones that will ignore Deshaun Watson or Patrick Mahomes interceptions on a weekly basis due to yardage and points.Simply put, Trubisky was one of three offensive players to turn the ball over and all three were in big situations. I’m not going to say Tarik Cohen had a bad game because of his fumble that ultimately caused overtime either.The second-yard quarterback’s improvements have been on full display over the last two games and there’s no denying that he’s taking large strides to becoming the player everyone hopes he can be. The fact that he was able to rebound from a slow start and continues to throw multiple touchdown passes in games is a very promising development that Bears fans should be happy about.CB Kyle FullerDouglas DeFelice-USA TODAY SportsTo put it lightly, the defense had its worst performance to date in 2018. For the first time all year, the gave up over 24 points per game and more importantly couldn’t get to the quarterback. They finished with zero sacks and only four quarterback hits against a team with a banged up offensive line, who was starting their statue of a backup quarterback in Brock Osweiler.Despite that, Fuller’s two interceptions stood out.On a day where the Bears defense gave up a total of 541 yards and 31 points, there wasn’t much to be happy about but Fuller’s two impressive plays on the ball should give fans hope that may he can turn around what has been an up and down season so far. Especially coming off his brand new four-year deal that was worth over $14 million per year with plenty of guaranteed money. With Prince Amukamara’s hamstring still an issue (he left in the second half after reaggravating it), Fuller’s presence will be big over the next few weeks.Oh and the Bears already have more interceptions through five games this year than they did all last season. I gotta admit, it’s been brutal to be a hard core Chicago Bears fan for the last half decade. We have had to live with watching everything from frustrating inconsistency all the way down to blistering incompetence. We have had our hope raised only to be crushed time and again. From watching Lovie’s last team of old, hurt but talented players fade, though the hope and then absolute embarrassment of the Mark Trestman years... to see bad Jerry Angelo drafts followed by bad Phil Emory drafts, it was heartbreaking.We trotted out coordinators like Mel Tucker who was absolutely horrible, and “Mr. throw my players under a bus” Aaron Kromer Tarik Cohen Color Rush Jersey , both of whom stayed on LONG after it was apparent they should have been fired. Through all of this, the enigma that is Jay Cutler both thrilled us with unbelievable talent and appalled us with astoundingly careless regard for ball security... We had characters that, while immensely talented, were flawed teammates who caused distractions off the field and in the locker room. One player famously left town every week to do a national TV show, and that was OK with management. Another showed up to practice drunk, threatening everybody in sight.Moving on into the John Fox / Ryan Pace years, we knew we were in full-rebuild mode, and while Fox was at least able to get control of the locker room, Ryan Pace mostly whiffed on his first draft and we were all thinking “oh, no, not AGAIN!”Pace send problem players packing, but he didn’t do a very good job of replacing their on-field talent. Fox took control of the locker room and brought the program back into focus, and in his best move as our coach he brought in Vic Fangio to run the defense. Meanwhile, the offensive coordinator carousel turned, with the Bears seemingly installing a new system every year... or in the case of Dowell Logains, doing whatever it was he had them do (I’m not really sure to this date what that was, it sure wasn’t an offensive system...). We watched the wins dwindle: 10-6, 8-8, 5-11, 6-10, 3-13, 5-11Just. Brutal.But here you were, with us. You rooted. You supported, You shared your thoughts and feelings and frustrations, but yet you stayed with your team. You kept the faith.Then something truly changed. The Chicago Bears organization “went all in” with the drafting of potential franchise quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. Following one last year of offensive dysfunction as John Fox & company proved not to be the people you want developing a young quarterback (not to mention a huge talent deficit in the receiving corps) the Bears turned the corner.The defense, however, continued to develop under Vic Fangio, ending the year as a top-ten squad full of very young talent. Ryan Pace admitted he had made mistakes https://www.thebearsfanshop.com/James-Daniels-Jersey , fired John Fox, got the “necessary but not glowing” contract extension that he needed to hire a new coach, and then he hired Matt Nagy.Nagy worked his tail off and did what most Bears fans would think the unthinkable just a year before... he convinced Vic Fangio to stay in Chicago and continue developing the already powerful Bears defense.After another strong draft by Pace (it’s hard to argue about the quality of his last two drafts), the Bears came into the season with some question marks (like how good would Mitchell Trubisky be) but one major hole... outside pass rushing.Then, Khalil Mack happened. With an entire team of starters under 30 years old (most WELL under 30), 8-3 has happened. Don’t get me wrong, nothing is locked up, nothing is set in stone. We still have 5 tough games to go this season and so far, we haven’t won anything but games. Still, we’ve seen VAST improvements on both sides of the ball, and we won’t have a losing season, no matter what! There’s a long road yet to go, but we are playing relevant football in December, baby!You deserve this year. You deserve right now. You deserve to enjoy the Chicago Bears return to relevance late in the season more than all of the “fair weather” fans who are going to start to jump on the Bears bandwagon now that we are competitive in the playoff race... It will be that much sweeter for you, and for me, because we never lost faith, we never gave up, and we never quit.As hard as it was, no matter how much crap we took from the other NFL fan bases, as much as it sucked, we never quit. So here’s my shout out to all of you long-time Windy City Gridiron readers, my fellow contributors and, frankly, to myself. It’s easy to be a “fan” when everything goes right for your team. We all know who the REAL fans are... because we’ve been together every day during the dark times, and we never once forgot to BEAR DOWN!