Buckle up, Bears fans. The excitement that the 2021 NFL Draft brought to Chicago by way of Justin Fields in the first round is going to come to its natural end.

This isn’t a Bears-specific phenomenon. It’s the cycle of the NFL calendar. Hope and optimism always dominate offseason transactions, be it free agency or the draft. But then this funny thing happens: the regular season rolls around and games, with wins and losses, take place.

Enjoying a winning season isn’t always about how good a team is. Instead, it’s usually more about luck. Maybe it’s one of those rare healthy years; no big-name players get hurt. Maybe it’s simply that the close games — games decided by a field goal or less — end up bouncing your way. And sometimes, it’s as simple as enjoying a soft schedule.

That last part — the soft schedule — won’t be the case for the Bears in 2021, who were recently dubbed as the club with the hardest 17-game slate in the league, per ESPN’s Football Power Index.

The difficulty of each team’s schedule was based on the FPI’s projected win totals for 2021.

For starters, the NFC has nine road games this season, so a team from that conference was always likely to occupy the top spot. And Chicago finds itself with eight games against FPI’s top 10 teams: at Rams, at Browns, at Bucs, vs. 49ers, vs. Ravens, at Seahawks and then a home-and-home with the Packers.

Yikes. That’s a tough road for a Bears team that’s still unsettled at quarterback, although the eventual starter is expected to be a marked improvement over the stumbling duo of Nick Foles and Mitch Trubisky in 2020.

A schedule assessment like this makes you wonder: should the Bears stick with Andy Dalton for a majority of the season? Would be it be silly to start Fields against a murderer’s row like Chicago is going to face this year?

The answer isn’t a clear or obvious one. If the Bears are in contention for a wild card or division title with Andy Dalton behind center, it’s pretty easy to leave him there. But if they’re winning games in spite of Dalton, and the offensive line has proven it’s capable of keeping whoever is under center upright? Then it’d make sense to give the rookie the keys to the present and future.

There are only two scenarios in which Fields won’t start for the Bears at some point in 2021: Dalton is the reason the Bears win games, or the Bears’ offensive line is a health and safety risk. Both are legitimate possibilities.

As for that schedule issue? Remember: it doesn’t matter how tough a team looks on paper in August. That whole ‘luck’ thing doesn’t factor in these strength of schedule projections. There’s no injury variable baked in. There’s no reason for Bears fans to panic.

Especially not with No. 1 on the roster.