LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Oakland Raiders had no chance.

It was 2002 and Bill Callahan’s team was preparing for the 500th Monday Night Football game ever — a daunting road trip to Denver where the 4-4 Raiders would play the 6-2 Broncos. The Raiders had won their first four games that season, but then lost four straight games going into the bye week. The Broncos were also coming off their bye week and were brimming with confidence as they welcomed a division rival they had beaten 12 times in their last 14 meetings.

No one gave the Raiders a chance. The fans had given up on the season. The media called for Callahan to be fired. And many were questioning the offense.

Marc Trestman’s offense.

The Bears’ current head coach was the Raiders’ offensive coordinator in 2002 and he spent the bye week searching for answers after Oakland had averaged just 16 points during the team’s four-game losing streak.

“Many believed the league had caught up with the offense, and many media people believed we wouldn’t win another game,” Trestman wrote in his book, Perseverance. 

Sound familiar?

It’s almost the exact same situation the Bears find themselves in this week, although they are in an even deeper hole at 3-5. But the Bears will take their underachieving offense to Green Bay Sunday for a primetime game against the 5-3 Packers, a team that has won 10 of the last 12 meetings against the Bears.

It’s a game few think the Bears can win.

No Chance

No one thought the Raiders could win in Denver either. In fact, the day before the game, Callahan and Trestman filled up two huge grease boards with all the reasons why the Raiders had “no chance” to beat the Broncos.

But the Raiders did beat the Broncos. In fact, it wasn’t even close. Against one of the best defenses in the league, quarterback Rich Gannon completed 34-of-38 passes for 352 yards and three touchdowns. At one point, Gannon even completed 21 passes in a row, an NFL single-game record.

When it was over, the Raiders had won 34-10.

So why did Callahan and Trestman fill up those grease boards with all the reasons why they couldn’t win?

“Because we found out the reasons why we could win,” Trestman told 87.7 The Game Thursday. “We were able to isolate those reasons and format a game philosophy to allow us to get it done. At least to go in there and create an environment where we had a chance to do that.”

Trestman wasn’t the only current Bears coach who was on that ’02 Oakland Raiders staff. Offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer was the Raiders’ offensive line coach, while Bears running backs coach Skip Peete held the same title in Oakland.

“They were writing down the reasons that you could lose the game,” Kromer recalled. “That was what was important about that game. What could cause you to lose. Why would you lose a game like that? And from there, work backwards and say, ‘OK, how do we avoid these things?’”

It’s too early in the week to know if Trestman and Kromer will bring out the grease boards in their Appleton, Wis. hotel Saturday, but coming out of the bye week, the coaching staff’s approach leading up to Sunday’s game in Green Bay has been similar. And that includes not “doing anything special,” as Trestman put it.

“(In 2002) we did a bye week study, we went back to work, we stayed focused on what we could control,” Trestman said. “Went back to practice, put the four weeks behind us and there was certainly a lot of noise after those four games and I think the guys did a good job of moving forward.”

They certainly did. Not only did the Raiders beat the Broncos in Denver, but they turned their entire season around, going 7-1 the rest of the way. The Raiders’ offense ended up ranking No. 1 in the league and Gannon was named the NFL’s MVP. More importantly, Oakland’s 11-5 record was good enough to not only win the AFC West, but also clinch the No. 1 seed in the AFC going into the playoffs. From there, the Raiders beat the Jets and Titans convincingly before losing to the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl.

And it all started with the Week 10 game they had “no chance” to win.

The First-15

Marc Trestman holds his quarterbacks to what he admits is “an unreachable standard.” He asks them to do the impossible: play “a perfect game.”

And as he details in his book, on Nov. 11, 2002 in Denver, “Rich Gannon came closer than any quarterback in NFL history to playing a perfect game.”

This is where the ’02 Raiders-Broncos game differs from Sunday’s game between the Bears and Packers. The matchups are different. Trestman won’t ask Bears quarterback Jay Cutler to drop back to pass 19 times in the offense’s first 24 snaps, as he did with Gannon in Denver. The Packers have the league’s worst run defense (153.5 yards per game) and Trestman will be looking to exploit that weakness.

But while the play calling will be different, Trestman still uses the same approach in his game-plan with what he calls “The First-15”.

“When we talk about the First-15, we’re talking about plays to get our guys ready to play the game,” Trestman said. “They’re plays that give the guys an idea of how we’re going to start. And to make sure that they have a good sense for what we’re trying to accomplish.”

A lot goes into the First-15. In his book, Trestman described the detailed process in Oakland: “The first hour might be a general discussion over lunch, reviewing the week’s practice. From there we talked about our players’ energy levels and our injury situation, followed by reviewing the next day’s matchups. We would then transition to putting our priority plays up on the grease boards. Then we spent time just talking about them, and articulating why we liked or disliked them. This was not always an easy exercise since we would go in with 125 to 150 passing plays and 25 to 30 running plays.”

Trestman went on to admit that the process was even more “exhaustive” in Oakland because of all the weapons they had. The offense included wide receivers like Jerry Rice, Tim Brown and Jerry Porter, along with running back Charlie Garner. It was a good problem to have, and one he also has in Chicago with Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, Martellus Bennett and Matt Forte.

“I had to be sure to spread the ball early in order to capture their attention and involvement early in the game plan. That was key,” Trestman wrote in Perseverance. 

But the First-15 does not refer to the exact first 15 play calls in any given game. They don’t include special situations or short-yardage situations, and they’re not red zone plays.

“It’s a list of plays that give you a starting point in a game,” Kromer said. “When guys are jittery, they know, ‘Hey these plays are coming up and I know these plays.’”

Trestman writes in his book that he and Callahan “would spend literally the entire Saturday before a game together laying out the First-15.” Today, it’s something the coaching staff still works on late in the week, but Trestman said it’s more of a collective process that includes more than just the head coach and the offensive coordinator.

But in 2002, it was in that “First-15” meeting when Trestman and Callahan filled up the grease boards with all the reasons why they could not beat the Broncos.

“Putting the Denver First-15 together with Bill was one of the most memorable times in all my years of coaching,” Trestman wrote in his book.

The First-15 doesn’t necessarily decide football games, but it does provide the opportunity for a good start, something the Bears took advantage of earlier this season against the Packers. In fact, the Bears’ First-15 against Green Bay in Week 4 was their best of the season, as they methodically drove down the field in exactly 15 plays and got off to a 7-0 lead with a 6-yard touchdown pass from Cutler to Brandon Marshall. On that drive, Trestman called seven passes and eight runs — achieving the balance both Trestman and Bears general manager Phil Emery admitted they’d like to see more of in the second half of the season. The Bears gained 30 yards on the eight running plays, using both Matt Forte and Ka’Deem Carey, and they gained 38 yards through the air as Cutler completed 5-of-6 passes. But it was Cutler’s scramble for 12 yards on 3rd-and-4 that Trestman said “was really a key to continuing the drive.”

One might even say it was close to a “perfect” drive.

Buying In

While the opening drive against the Packers might be a perfect example of what the Bears’ offense is striving for on a regular basis, the rest of that Week 4 game against the Packers proves that consistency through four quarters is what gets you to the playoffs, and the Bears have yet to play consistently for a full game this season.

After going up 7-0, the Packers punched back, and while the Bears were able to score 10 points on their next two possessions, they trailed 21-17 at halftime when tight end Martellus Bennett was stopped just short of the goal line as time expired. The Bears wouldn’t score again that afternoon as Cutler threw two second-half interceptions while playing from behind and the Packers went on to win 38-17.

For the 2002 Raiders, they were able to use their First-15 in Denver to springboard five straight scoring drives, two of which carried over into the second half. But what they did in the first half didn’t just set the tone for the second half of that specific game — it set the tone for the second half of the season, and eventually carried them to the Super Bowl.

So can the Bears do the same?

“Obviously it’s two different teams, two different (rosters),” Kromer said. “But it’s something that through experience you grow as a person and as a coach and a player from learning those situations and I think all three of us coaches did, realizing that if you get back to basics and you really push the guys to understand they can win, and just because we lost a couple and the sky is falling everywhere else in the world, if you keep your head up and you keep working, good things can happen.”

That’s easier said than done, but in his book, Trestman pointed to something that happened with the 2002 Raiders that 2014 Chicago Bears would benefit from too:

“We had some great veteran players on our roster who had accomplished some great things up to that point in their careers, and thankfully they were willing to make the individual sacrifices that champions do. When they bought in, the rest followed and great things began to happen.”

After hearing a portion of that passage from his own book Thursday at Halas Hall, Trestman responded:

“It’s what it’s all about. You take consolation or you sit back and you evaluate. You say, ‘This what we’ve done and this what I could do better. This is what I have to do to help my football team win.’ I think that’s really it. That’s the point. I’ve got a job to do and I’ve got to attack it genuinely and enthusiastically and with great demeanor. That’s what leaders do.”

And if all else fails, maybe Trestman and Kromer will just get the grease boards out Saturday in Wisconsin. By listing all the reasons why the Bears won’t beat the Packers Sunday night, they might just figure out how they can.

Adam Hoge covers the Bears for 87.7 The Game and TheGameChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge.