Bears - 49ers Preview: Thursday Night Special

How fun did this game look when the NFL schedule was first released? A Thursday night game in San Fransisco against Mike Singletary's team in front of the whole country (whole country that's at a bar or has NFL Network) sounded pretty good. My my how things can change in eight weeks. A couple of blowout losses and sloppy play later and this once marquee, prime-time match-up is now almost competing against the new episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for my interest.

Let it be known the Bears season is not quite over yet, although the way they look right now a 6-10 record is much easier to fathom than 10-6. They will probably need to win three in a row (SF, Philadelphia, Minnesota --- yikes!) and get their record up to 7-4 in order to have a good shot at making the playoffs. That streak has to start with beating former number one pick and fresh off the bench, Alex Smith.

Let it be known my "good quarterbacks beat the Bears" theory will be put to test this game. Alex Smith is not a good quarterback like Matt Ryan, Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers and Kurt Warner are. He's not exactly bad and also a bit of a wild-card. So does that mean the Bears will beat him? Who knows? The Bears have done nothing to show me they can beat a passionately coached and competitive team (albeit not a very good team --- 3-5 record, losers of four straight) on the road.

Since I couldn't figure out how to tie-in a story about my Dad choking on a Portillo's Polish (don't worry it's only week 10) and because the general themes of the Bears have become repetitive--- defense gets no pressure on the QB, defense gets beat in the passing game, offense relies on Cutler's arm too much, offense has no running identity --- I end this preview and hope once again that I am wrong:

San Francisco 23 Chicago 20