Alas, we're looking at end of line for Bears

Is this the end?

It doesn’t feel like it, right? No sounds of Boyz II Men in the distant backdrop. No ‘‘The White Lotus’’ season-ending-like montage. Mid-January football. Not. Done. Yet. Better. Best. Great. Next?

Week or season is the answer.

As the Rams enter into our deep-freeze terrordome called Soldier Field — a place where the new ‘‘Iceman’’ has cometh and called hometh — the overarching, omnipresent, inescapable and everlasting vibe and conviction is that it will be the Bears who live for another day. For — at the least — one more game.

Then there’s that gotdamn thing called obviousness that makes you face beliefs you do everything in your human power to avoid or act as though doesn’t exist. It’s encouraging. It’s exhausting. It’s the biggest lie the Bears and the city will have to tell ourselves this entire season — that, for us, there will be a next week.

No Case Keenum speech will save them. No Bears player telling teammates, ‘‘Play for your brother, play for the name on the back of it, play for the name of the Chicago Bears, bro. Hey, we destine for this,’’ will act as first responder. No spotting teams two- to three-touchdown leads as time and quarters disappear can act as the ‘‘right where we want to be’’ part of the plan. No Chance the Rapper or Common supplying rhythmic words of empowerment will help. All with the hope that no Matthew Stafford-to-Davante Adams final-drive, ‘‘Let’s go snatch these guys hearts’’ motivational harangue will come true.

With this whole season’s run aligning so perfectly with the 40th anniversary of Bears OGs shoulder-walking Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan off of the Super Bowl Field in New Orleans, it feels way too similar to not think that another Super Bowl, in three weeks, isn’t how this season is supposed to end. Until it won’t. Until now.

Again, obviousness. Too many times, the Bears have dodged facing a team’s best quarterback. They didn’t see Joe Burrow. They didn’t see Lamar Jackson, didn’t see Aaron Rodgers. They only saw Jordan Love in Week 16 for a little over a quarter, faced Shedeur Sanders in only his fourth start, faced Jaxson Dart in only his seventh start. But when they saw Brock Purdy, when they saw Jared Goff, when they saw a healthy Love last week despite the victory, we were given direct insight to the Bears’ Achilles’ heel with the performances they all put on.

This time, even with an index-finger injury on his passing hand, Stafford, the NFL’s presumptive MVP who has played better than Purdy, Goff and Love against better defenses, will be on the field — under center and in the shotgun, staring the Bears’ defense in the face, possibly tearing the defense apart — for at least 60 or 65 snaps. Barring injury or Dennis Allen-schemed miracles.

Because the Bears finally will be facing a team better than they are (13-5 record to their 12-6), one at full strength (not missing a major/key/Pro Bowl-level player), one that won’t take them for granted halfway or three-quarters of the way through a game because they know exactly what they’re capable of. This NFL version of survive and advance by the Bears stops here. Cue G.C. Cameron.

The reals this game will force the Bears to finally have to face:

• They’re a year or two ahead of schedule.

• Timewise this season, they’ve played more bad football than great football. (If during a game — almost any game — they were medically evaluated this season, they’d be diagnosed as mercurial.)

• Their running game has fallen into a Saquon Barkley slump.

• Puka Nacua, arguably pound-for-pound the best offensive player in the NFL, will be a bigger problem for them to contain or stop than Stafford.

• They still have +1400 odds to win the SB. (The Rams are +320.)

Tom Waddle’s analysis of a Bears victory Sunday will go down as one of the greatest logical reasons in the history of Bears football: ‘‘The Rams are the best team in the NFC. They, on paper, are a better team than the Bears. You don’t play the game on paper. . . . I’m picking the Bears to win this game because. That’s it. That’s my analysis. I’m picking the Bears to win this game against a team I feel is better than them because.’’

It gets no more perfect than that. It’s impostor syndrome at its finest.

If there are football gods — and best believe there are, or why would this particular season just so happen be the one where the Bears and Packers were scheduled to play each other three times in a six-week span? — they’ve at this point done more for the Bears than any other team in the NFL. At some point, it’s only smart to believe that it’s time for other teams’ prayers to be answered.

Not that the Rams will need the football gods Sunday, but it probably is time for us to face this mortal coil that the answered prayers the Bears have ‘‘found a way’’ to create for themselves have run their course. Season got next, not week.

So . . . is this the end?

Unfortunately, it kinda, sorta, damn sure feels like it.