LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- It doesn't happen often, but the entire trajectory of a franchise can change in one game.

The Chicago Bears know firsthand. The last trip for the Los Angeles Chargers -- then based in San Diego -- to Chicago on Nov. 20, 2011 unexpectedly triggered a series of events that took the Bears years to recover from.

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On that day, the Bears were on a roll -- the 31-20 victory over the Chargers was their fifth straight win. At 7-3, the Bears seemed destined for another playoff berth after losing at home to the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game the previous year. The city was electric.

Sadly, the euphoria was short-lived. Quarterback Jay Cutler, who at long last had clicked with enigmatic offensive coordinator Mike Martz, broke his right thumb late in the Chargers game while trying to make a tackle after an interception. Cutler would require surgery and his season was over.

The Bears turned to backup quarterbacks, first Caleb Hanie and later Josh McCown.

The result: Chicago lost five of its last six and, at 8-8, missed the playoffs.

The Bears fired GM Jerry Angelo at the end of the season and hired Phil Emery, a move that immediately put head coach Lovie Smith on notice.

The Bears went 10-6 the next year and Emery still fired Smith -- the third-winningest head coach in franchise history.

Jay Cutler broke his right thumb late in a loss to the Chargers in 2011, an injury that required surgery and ended his season. AP Photo/Scott Boehm

After an exhaustive search, Emery shocked everyone and hired Marc Trestman, a former NFL offensive coordinator who had been exiled to the CFL.

The Trestman era -- remembered for rampant organizational dysfunction and infighting -- lasted just two years. Trestman and Emery were both fired after the 2014 season.

The Bears then hired general manager Ryan Pace, who hired head coach John Fox. That partnership went 14-34 until Pace mercifully launched Fox following the 2017 campaign. The Bears were so bad and boring under Fox that each season was basically over by the time the calendar flipped to October. The Bears won one game in September from 2015-17.

In 2017, Pace also traded up to draft a quarterback No. 2 overall in the 2017 NFL draft.

Only after the arrival of coach Matt Nagy and Khalil Mack did the Bears begin to dig out of the mess. But it took five years for the Bears to get it right after the Smith firing, which was caused by the Angelo firing, which was caused by the 2011 collapse and Cutler injury.

The Chargers were unwittingly at the center of all of it.

Fast forward to Sunday, and the franchise-altering warning signs are again ominous.

At 3-3, the Bears’ once-promising season hangs in the balance. A loss at home to injury-ravaged Los Angeles would be calamitous.

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And another ineffective outing by Trubisky could ultimately lead to a quarterback change -- a drastic decision that Nagy wants to avoid. The Bears desperately want him to succeed. Pace, the man who picked Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, needs the 25-year-old quarterback to succeed.

But there’s too much season left for the Bears to abandon their playoff dreams. Either Trubisky recovers and resembles the quarterback who, at times, played well in Nagy’s system last year, or Chicago -- for the sake of the other 52 guys in the locker room -- must seriously consider an alternative. Trubisky is far from the only problem with Nagy’s offense, but he’s definitely not been a solution.

“He’s learning,” Nagy said on Thursday. “This is a learning process. ... There’s plays that he makes and so when you see those plays and you see him going through the highs of this offense, you understand it’s there. Now we need to get more of that consistently...

"So we need less of the gray and more of the highs, and that’s going to happen and that happens in time. The difference is that the time is the issue right now. That’s where we’re all at. Time is of the essence.”

Sunday feels like a tipping point, not only for Trubisky, but for the entire Bears operation. Go figure the Chargers are the opponent.

“We all understand that at 3-3, that you’re getting to a point like I said last week where every week that goes by matters,” Nagy said.