The New Orleans Saints were a better story, but the Chicago Bears were a better team. Fans everywhere outside Chicago wanted to see the Saints give New Orleans something to cheer about a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, but the Bears have been the NFC’s best team all season and proved that yesterday, winning 39-14 and earning a spot in Super Bowl XLI.

On a snowy day at Soldier Field, the tough, physical Bears made a statement about what kind of team this is. It forces the opponents into mistakes: Safety Chris Harris and defensive ends Mark Anderson and Adewale Ogunleye all forced fumbles. It delivers punishing hits: Linebacker Brian Urlacher drilled the Saints’ receivers when they ran in the middle of the field, taking away a big part of quarterback Drew Brees’ game. And it wins with the kicking game: Robbie Gould made all three of his field goal attempts, punter Brad Maynard averaged 47.4 yards and coverage gunner Adrian Peterson had four tackles and forced a fumble on a kickoff return.

Chicago is also a team whose quarterback, Rex Grossman, is more a liability than an asset. As the Bears prepare for the Super Bowl, they still don’t have any reason to be confident that Grossman can win the game for them if their defense and special teams falter. At halftime Grossman had completed three of 12 passes for 37 yards, while Brees had completed 13 of 22 for 166 yards. But the rest of the Bears had outplayed the rest of the Saints by such a large margin that the quarterbacks scarcely mattered and Chicago led 16–7.

Grossman did complete his final six passes after the Saints began to focus exclusively on stopping the run, but even then most of the credit goes to speedy receiver Bernard Berrian, who accounted for more than half of the Bears’ passing yards. Berrian’s diving 33-yard touchdown catch in the fourth quarter will be replayed on NFL Films for decades.

The Bears are at their best on offense when they don’t have to rely on such aerial acrobatics and instead overpower the opposition with the running game. Chicago’s second quarter touchdown drive was a thing of beauty to old-school football purists: It consisted entirely of Thomas Jones runs and culminated with a two-yard touchdown plunge. Bears tight end Desmond Clark and center Olin Kreutz were particularly effective blocking for Jones on the series, on which Jones picked up 69 yards on eight carries.

Brees had much better numbers than Grossman, but even when Brees completed his passes, the Bears attacked him. Receiver Devery Henderson caught a 40-yard pass from Brees on the second play of the game, but Ogunleye punished Brees for hanging in the pocket, hitting him as he released the ball. It was like that for Brees all day. The Bears sacked him three times, forced him to fumble twice and forced him to commit an intentional grounding penalty that gave Chicago a safety.

Still, the Saints have every reason to be proud of their season. Reggie Bush has emerged as a true superstar. The Bears knew that Bush is more of a threat as a receiver than he is as a runner, and because of that they always used their nickel defense when Bush was on the field. But even with that tactical maneuver, Bush finished with seven catches for 132 yards, including an 88-yard touchdown early in the second half that cut the deficit to 16–14 and made it look, for a brief moment, that the Saints were going to take control.

The Saints also have the right quarterback in Brees, a great crop of young receivers in Henderson, Marques Colston and Terrance Copper, and a good young offensive line. And Saints coach Sean Payton was clearly the right choice to lead this team. The disappointment from yesterday’s game aside, Payton richly deserved the Coach of the Year award he won this year, and he is a young coach who should have a long, successful career in New Orleans.

But yesterday was about the Bears’ defense that Chicago coach Lovie Smith has created. Smith has a genius for developing game plans that take advantage of his athletic players who keep going at full-speed until the whistle blows. As great a story as the Saints in the Super Bowl would have been, this great Bears defense meeting one of the league’s top quarterbacks means no one should be disappointed by Super Bowl XLI.

Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.