By default, somebody had to win this.

Someone had to be better out of the Bears and Giants, out of Andy Dalton and Mike Glennon, out of Matt Nagy and Joe Judge. So as the rest of the country was blissfully unaware that this matchup was even taking place, the Bears walloped the Giants 29-3 in a game that was thoroughly inconsequential.

It’s better to blow out the Giants than to get clobbered by them, especially with Glennon returning to Soldier Field for the first time, but the only congratulations to the Bears is for finding the rare opponent that’s actually worse than them. This was the fourth time they’d been favored all season.

There’s obligation to take this seriously. It wasn’t a glimpse of what could’ve been, nor did it portend anything to come. They beat the Giants. Everyone does.

There’s no need to indulge it as though it’s any kind of accomplishment.

They nearly matched their season high in points. But it wasn’t a case of finally capturing the magic that has eluded them for years. It was just that they played the Giants, a team that had given up 112 points over its previous four games.

Their defense opened with Trevis Gipson’s strip-sack on Glennon that led to a quick touchdown and followed with two interceptions, a safety and three more sacks — including another strip-sack by Gipson late in the third quarter. But it doesn’t mean the Bears have reversed their steady decline. It means they played a Giants team that has scored the second-fewest points in the NFL.

It’s not overly harsh to call this meaningless. It’s just a fact.

The Bears have had plenty of these empty victories under Nagy. Who could forget the glory of throttling the Texans and Jaguars late last season? Those are Nagy’s favorite teams. He went 3-11 against playoff teams over the 2019 and ’20 seasons and was 1-6 against teams that were in the playoff field entering Sunday.

The Bears were a juggernaut against the Giants, but only in the way that someone dreams they have superpowers. It all drifts away when the alarm goes off.

From the rosiest viewpoint, the Bears’ games have been little more than a formality since falling apart against the Ravens in Week 11. Many reasonable minds wrote them off well before that, but that was the point at which is no longer credible for anyone — even Nagy, the irrepressible optimist — to talk about playoffs.

The games became irrelevant not only for the team, but for Nagy. One of the reasons the Patch.com report that he’d be fired after the Thanksgiving game gained so much traction was because everything about Nagy’s circumstances at the time made it sound plausible.

If the Bears wanted to jump-start anything, be it their season at large or fan enthusiasm, that would’ve been the time to do it. When it didn’t happen, the passion waned. The only thing worse for the Bears than an angry fan base is an apathetic one.

There haven’t been many “Fire Nagy” chants since then.

There have been a lot of empty seats, though, and the crowd Sunday was spotty. A generous estimate: Soldier Field was two-thirds full. When Nagy opted against going for it on fourth-and-goal from the 3-yard line with about a minute until halftime, some halfhearted boos swirled briefly before dissipating in resignation.

There was a similarly tepid reaction shortly after that when Dalton underthrew a wide-open Darnell Mooney deep down the field.

It’s hard to get mad about something that really doesn’t matter.

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Sometime after the Bears caused Mike Glennon to fumble on the first play and forced him to throw an interception on the second drive of the game Sunday — but before the safety the Bears got in the final minute of the first half — came a scary thought. The team on the opposite sideline could be the Bears in two years.

It should absolutely frighten the Bears. And management should take every measure, starting next week, to make sure it doesn’t come to pass. Sunday’s 29-3 win against the Giants means nothing, other than being a cautionary tale.

In 2019, the Giants drafted Duke quarterback Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick. After Jones had an inept rookie year paired with an offensive-minded head coach — sound familiar? — the Giants set out to hire a head coach.

Their choice: Joe Judge, the Patriots’ special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach who had never been a head coach at any level, anywhere. He’d either been a special teams assistant or special teams coordinator at every stop in his 15-year career. His expertise didn’t align with the team’s main problem: developing Jones at quarterback.

The Giants hired Judge despite having an interview lined up with Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who could have done just that. So could Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy or former Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, whom they interviewed.

At the end of two seasons, it’s fair to wonder whether Judge will get a third.

The Giants weren’t the first team to get their head coaching hire wrong — the Bears will replace Matt Nagy in one week — but the McCaskeys need to learn from their mistake. Judge offered no skillset that would have answered the most important question in sports: how to develop a young quarterback.

Nagy, despite his eventual failure in doing so, at least had that on his resume.

The Bears need to hire a coach who will make sure quarterback Justin Fields, who will be in his second season next year, doesn’t fail. When they inevitably fire Nagy one day after the season finale, they need to hire someone who has a plan to make sure Fields thrives. That shouldn’t limit the Bears to offensive candidates — but anyone who’s not better have a thorough plan.

They certainly can’t hire someone like Judge, whose resume offered no indication he’d be able to elevate Jones. He’d been a special teams assistant at Alabama and a special teams coach with the Patriots. The Giants were lured in by the two name brands in their respective sports — not the area of expertise.

Jones has won less than third of his career starts and has a career passer rating of 84.3. A neck injury ended his season prematurely, forcing Glennon to bumble his way through the Giants’ final month of games.

Perhaps it’s impossible to separate the Giants’ failure to draft a quarterback with their failure to find the right coach. Perhaps that’s the point.

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The Chicago Bears put on a phenomenal performance at Soldier Field. They defeated the New York Giants with style as the final score was 29-3. New York stood no chance in this one as they were outmatched in every avenue of football. Former Bears quarterback Mike Glennon was under center in place of Daniel Jones and it did not work out well.

Eli Manning in his prime would have had trouble beating the Bears today with this Giants team. They have been very bad during the entire tenure of David Gettleman as their general manager. When Bears fans get mad at their team, they can know that there are other teams out there in very similar situations.

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CHICAGO — Bears defensive end Robert Quinn set a franchise single-season sack record Sunday with his 18th takedown after he tackled New York Giants quarterback Mike Glennon in the fourth quarter of Chicago’s 29-3 win.

Quinn, 31, got close several times in the game before eventually beating left tackle Andrew Thomas for the strip sack (though the ball was recovered by the Giants).

Quinn broke former Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent’s mark of 17.5 sacks set in 1984. He began the season with 5.5 sacks in his first seven games played and then went on a tear, recording at least one sack in his past eight games, including Sunday.

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His best day came in late November when he recorded 3.5 sacks against the Baltimore Ravens.

Quinn was a first-round pick of the then-St. Louis Rams in 2011. He recorded 19 sacks for them in the 2013 season. He signed a five-year, $70 million deal with the Bears before the 2020 season.

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The Bears have a new sack king.

When outside linebacker Robert Quinn sacked Giants quarterback Mike Glennon for his 18th sack Sunday, he passed Richard Dent’s single-season franchise record of 17 1/2.

Quinn forced Glennon to fumble with about eight minutes to play Sunday at Soldier Field.

Dent’s 17 1/2 sacks in 1984 were a Bears single-season record — until Sunday. The Pro Football Hall of Famer had 17 the next season, too. Until Quinn’s performance this season, Dent’s 1984 and 1985 seasons were the only two in franchise history in which a player topped 12 1/2 sacks.

Dent’s sack record came in 16 games.

The Bears signed Quinn to a five-year, $70 million deal in March 2020 — and he immediately posted one of the most underwhelming seasons in the NFL, totaling two sacks despite playing across from Khalil Mack.

Quinn’s 2021 was as dominant as the previous year was disappointing — even with Mack hurt for more than half the season. Quinn had at least one-half a sack in 12 of 15 games before Sunday — and two or more in four games. He had a season-high 3 1/2 sacks against the Ravens in November.

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DeMar DeRozan has toe issues.

More specifically, making sure he knows where to put them.

Then again, there’s always that guy.

Whether it’s pick-up games, church league runs, or the playground, he’s drawn to the comforts of that mid-range zone even when he wants to dial up from long distance. That leads to a lot of long twos mistaken as threes.

DeRozan is that guy for the Bulls.

“I always say I think he’s a better three-point shooter than people give him credit for, but oddly enough he’s always got his toes on the line,” acting head coach Chris Fleming said with a laugh. “I’m always telling him that.”

Message heard by the veteran small forward.

At least in the previous two games, where DeRozan continued living up to his “Game of Thrones”-influenced nickname, “King of the Fourth.”

In Indiana on Friday, it was a one-legged runner at the horn to down the Pacers, and then the follow-up in the nation’s capital the next night was even more impressive. That’s because DeRozan’s toes could have been an issue.

With 3.3 seconds left on the clock, DeRozan not only took time to check where his toes were, but even got off a fake pump to gather himself.

Shot taken, dagger delivered.

“Three seconds left and two guys hanging on him he had it in his mind to look down and see where his feet were to make that shot … incredible shot,” Fleming said.

Fitting, because after 34 games, an incredible season for the 34 year old.

DeRozan not only leads the Bulls in scoring with 26.8 points per game, but also in PER [Player Efficiency Rating] at 24.15.

He does his best work late, however, with DeRozan scoring a league-high 241 points in the fourth quarter on 53.1% from the field, but was also a ridiculous 7-for-13 (53.8%) from three, with most of those long-range shots feeling very meaningful for his teammates.

“It’s an honor to be trusted in the fourth quarter,” DeRozan said. “Whether things are going [good] or going bad, my teammates always lean on me to be that calm presence to kind of bring us home. I always bring that calm presence as much as I can in the fourth quarter, letting guys understand as long we got time, we got a chance.”

Sitting atop the Eastern Conference now, this team is feeling like they have more than a chance when they take the court.

Zach LaVine made that very clear, admitting that for the first time in his career every night he and his teammates step on the court they do so feeling like a win is going to be the final result. Much different for LaVine the previous seven seasons, where it was almost like, “How are we going to blow this one tonight?”

Thank team chemistry, a roster full of players with chips on their shoulders, but more importantly thank DeRozan.

“The beauty of it is he is who he is,” Fleming said, when discussing DeRozan’s presence in the locker room. “He comes every day. He’s got a routine and a way to treat people. I think some of it just starts there.

“He’s come here for the right reasons. He really wants to be part of a winner. He’s a winning player. He has been on good teams before. I think the way he goes about talking to his teammates and treating his teammates and treating and talking to his coaches, I think that of all the other things you see on the basketball court and his ability to put that thing in the basket, I think it starts there with him.”

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When Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields remained on the board just long enough for the Bears to grab him at No. 11, it sparked real hope in an understandably cynical fan base.

Chicago sports fans were treated as well to a no-doubter of a division title by the White Sox and — not to be understated — a cool, clutch playoff run by the Sky to their first championship. More recently, the Bulls have re-emerged as a team that’s not only legitimately very good but also a blast to watch.

In this week’s “Polling Place,” your home for Sun-Times sports polls on Twitter, we asked which of those 2021 stories was the best one. Outside of the voting, the biggest reaction was from fans who wanted to know why the Sky didn’t run away with it.

“Come on, people! Winning a title trumps everything,” @mtulls commented.

“This poll is proof that y’all put too much importance on grown men doing the bare minimum,” @scuriiosa wrote.

Speaking of the bare minimum, we also asked about Sunday’s Bears-Giants game. On to the polls:

Poll No. 1: Which of these 2021 Chicago sports stories was your favorite?

Upshot: Maybe look at it this way: There have been too many years when there weren’t four worthy choices from which to choose, certainly not among our big-league teams. What Candace Parker and the Sky did was magical. Unlike the Sky, though, the Bulls have been good — and newcomer DeMar DeRozan pretty dang great — from the start. There’s a lot to be said for starting fast and then keeping the pedal to the metal.

Poll No. 2: If someone gave you tickets to Sunday’s Bears-Giants game at Soldier Field, would you go?

Upshot: Other than having to endure the whole 60-minutes-of-bad-vs.-worse thing, what could go wrong? (We’ll have to reserve judgment, by the way, on which team is “bad” and which one is “worse.”) Take it away, @loggie007: “Let’s see, parking, cost of beer and any food, Giants and Bears fighting for draft choices, and temps below 20. Oh, joy.”

Poll No. 3: Which team will be good again first?

Upshot: “I’ve stared at this question for 10 minutes and still haven’t decided,” @spicycrawdad commented. Wait, is that because all three teams have such bright futures? Or is it because, well, you know? Something tells us it’s the latter.

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Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups has cleared COVID-19 protocols and will coach against the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night, sources told ESPN.

Billups has missed three games in protocols — all Portland losses.

Eleven of the NBA’s 30 coaches have spent time on the league’s COVID-19 list this season.

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