When the Chicago Bears are really good, which is to say a serious contender, there's a specific formula that works for this franchise. Punishing defense plus electrifying special teams and a dash of offense equals a potentially special season. The Bears are on the verge of that now, right at the edge of something promising.

Not many teams in this age of all-offense-all-the-time can amass 140 yards midway through the third quarter and hold a 28-point lead over a worthy division rival, but it's what the Bears know best. Historically, it's the signature of their best teams. Sunday's trashing of the Lions is exactly the way the Bears should aspire to play, from the 24 points off turnovers, to Devin Hester's 82-yard punt return touchdown, to the four interceptions of Matt Stafford, to repeatedly hitting the Lions in the mouth in the second half even if it meant making peace with the attendant penalties.

Jay Cutler said the melee in the fourth quarter was a sign of the Bears coming together. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Don't get me wrong, the Bears' ability to go deep into the postseason will depend largely on whether Jay Cutler and MVP Matt Forte can keep playing the way they have during the winning streak, which has now reached four games. But the Bears aren't rooted in offense, never have been and apparently never will be. Their championship teams, whether we're talking about The Monsters of the 1940s or '63 or '85 (or even the '06 team that lost the Super Bowl), were all built around superior defense, home run hitters on special teams and an offense that didn't give it away.

And don't the Bears know it. They're not looking for Jay Cutler to be Tom Brady or necessarily throw for 300 yards. It's pretty, but it's not who they are and it's not what they value. The Bears were fine with Cutler completing 9 of 19 passes for 123 yards Sunday. Let the Chargers or another one of the Pretty Boy teams worry about passing numbers; the Bears will take a six-turnover performance, particularly the two pick-sixes, over pitch-and-catch anytime. Now on the back nine of the season, the Bears have become comfortable with themselves. Dennis Green's line, "They are who we thought they were" comes to mind watching them Sunday. Lovie Smith admitted it afterward when he said, "It was about the defense. We preach and we practice taking the ball away. You have three non-offensive scores you're going to be hard to beat. Defensively, it's not a good football game if we don't take away the ball."

So Lovie mentioned defense first. Second? "We rely on special teams," he said. "We're not shocked when we score with special teams; we've done it so much. I've had a great seat to watch every return [Hester] has had."

And what about the offense, Cutler was asked afterward? "We didn't have to do a whole lot," he said, summing up the offensive approach the franchise and its fans understand best over the years.

Anthony Adams, the defensive tackle, went as far as saying, "This is how we win. Everybody feeds off playing this way, playing defense like that, D. Hester returning like that. It's symbolic of how we play. That's the formula."

Appropriately, the Bears are OK if victory comes with fines and even warnings from the league office. When Detroit beat the Bears last month on "Monday Night Football," pretty decisively at that, the Lions let everybody know about it. Delivering cheap shots and running off at the mouth had become the Lions specialty, if you ask the Bears who said privately during the week they couldn't wait for the rematch. After the flesh-eating Ndamukong Suh had ripped Jay Cutler's helmet off without penalty, and after rookie Nick Fairley had slammed Cutler to the ground late (drawing a flag) the Bears had seen enough. With a cushy lead, retaliation was in order.

The defining hit of the afternoon came after the outcome had been determined. The score was 34-6 when Lance Briggs launched a shoulder into 6-foot-5, 240-pound Calvin Johnson (a Lion most Bears actually like), a textbook hit that dropped Johnson like a Joe Frazier left hook. The zebras flagged the hit, undoubtedly because in today's NFL it was simply too hard; you could hear Briggs' pads slam into Johnson over the din and the wind. It was quintessential Butkus, a great linebacker walking away energized from the scene of a hit-and-stare. The Bears, truth be told, could give a damn about the penalty. "Did I do a 360?" Brian Urlacher asked afterward about the leap he executed in the split second after the hit. The answer was, yes, he did.

Not long thereafter, on the fourth and final interception, this one by Tim Jennings, D.J. Moore got tangled during the return with Lions quarterback Matt Stafford, and after being thrown to the ground got up and ran like a snorting Bull right into Stafford, precipitating a bench-clearing brawl, which the Bears had wanted all week and the Lions had wanted ever since falling impossibly behind. Again, the Bears were thrilled to take down the Lions symbolically and literally, plus reestablish themselves as nasty boys who will walk it, as opposed to the Lions who mostly talk it.

Anyway, as Cutler said afterward, "You don't want to tell everybody to do that but yeah, at a certain point I think this team has to draw a line and if a team is going to cross it we have to retaliate and we're going to have to stand up for ourselves. We're coming together as a team and that's a good sign of it. I don't think anybody's going to really mess with that defense a lot. We've got some heavy hitters over there."