Anyone who has been into one of my threads knows that I'm a huge Bears fan, so take all this with the appropriately sized grain of salt.
Packers opened as a 3-point favorite; so what does that tell us? It tells that Vegas thinks that the general public is not taking the regular season into account. In week 3, the 2-0 Packers (pre-season NFC North favorites) came into Soldier Field to face the 2-0 Bears, a team that no one was giving much credit to considering the bizarre Chares Johnson non-TD in game 1 and a victory over a suddenly vulnerable-looking Cowboy team. The result was that odds-makers installed the Packers as 3-point favorites. And despite the outcome of that game, here we are 17-weeks later and odds-makers have again installed the Packers as 3-point favorites.
Given the amount of Packer-love I'm seeing on this board (and pretty much everywhere else outside Chicago), they've put the line where it should be. But that doesn't mean it's correct.
To me the bottom line is that in 2 meetings this season, the game has been tied with 3 minutes to go in the 4th. That says to me that these are a pair of evenly-matched teams and, given that, I'll take the team getting over a FG at home any day.
So let's hear about all the reasons why the Bears can't hang with the Packers (even though they've done it twice already this year):
Rodgers is better than Cutler. Yes, that's true; there's no disputing it. But let's not put him in the Brees/Manning/Brady category yet. He beat Cutler to his 1st playoff victory by a week. We've got a 2-1 playoff record in Rodgers vs. 1-0 with Cutler.
The Packers would have won the first game if it hadn't been for all the penalties. Probably true too, but please go back and watch that game and come back and tell me which of those penalties weren't legitimate. At least 3-4 times they got a holding penalty because a Bear (usually Peppers) was about to get a clear run at Rodgers and they held to protect him.
The Packers are a much better team now than they were when they lost to the Bears. Debatable. No doubting they are hot right now, but pull the IR report for the Packers and tell me they're anywhere close to healthy. Yeah, they are definitely the hottest team in football right now and they may be gelling as a team, but I'm quite sure that any Packer fan will tell you they'd rather have the roster they had during that first meeting rather than the roster they have now. But even if you insist that the Packers ARE better now, the Bears have improved at least as much if not more. They followed up the Packers win with a blowout loss at the Giants (where the mighty Todd Collins QB'd the 2nd half after Cutler's concussion), a win over a hapless Carolina team, and then back-to-back losses at home to Washington and Seattle before their bye. But following the bye the Bears went 7-2 over their final 9 games, losing to New England in a blizzard and then to Green Bay the last game of the year.
Three times this year the Bears have been 3-point home dogs (Packers, Eagles, and Patriots). Twice they shocked everyone and came out with victories. I think this Sunday will make #3, but at the very least the Bears will be in this one all the way till the end.
Now I'm just waiting until the Packer lovefest bids this one up to 4, at which point I'll probably throw 5 units on the line and 2 on the ML.
Packers opened as a 3-point favorite; so what does that tell us? It tells that Vegas thinks that the general public is not taking the regular season into account. In week 3, the 2-0 Packers (pre-season NFC North favorites) came into Soldier Field to face the 2-0 Bears, a team that no one was giving much credit to considering the bizarre Chares Johnson non-TD in game 1 and a victory over a suddenly vulnerable-looking Cowboy team. The result was that odds-makers installed the Packers as 3-point favorites. And despite the outcome of that game, here we are 17-weeks later and odds-makers have again installed the Packers as 3-point favorites.
Given the amount of Packer-love I'm seeing on this board (and pretty much everywhere else outside Chicago), they've put the line where it should be. But that doesn't mean it's correct.
To me the bottom line is that in 2 meetings this season, the game has been tied with 3 minutes to go in the 4th. That says to me that these are a pair of evenly-matched teams and, given that, I'll take the team getting over a FG at home any day.
So let's hear about all the reasons why the Bears can't hang with the Packers (even though they've done it twice already this year):
Rodgers is better than Cutler. Yes, that's true; there's no disputing it. But let's not put him in the Brees/Manning/Brady category yet. He beat Cutler to his 1st playoff victory by a week. We've got a 2-1 playoff record in Rodgers vs. 1-0 with Cutler.
The Packers would have won the first game if it hadn't been for all the penalties. Probably true too, but please go back and watch that game and come back and tell me which of those penalties weren't legitimate. At least 3-4 times they got a holding penalty because a Bear (usually Peppers) was about to get a clear run at Rodgers and they held to protect him.
The Packers are a much better team now than they were when they lost to the Bears. Debatable. No doubting they are hot right now, but pull the IR report for the Packers and tell me they're anywhere close to healthy. Yeah, they are definitely the hottest team in football right now and they may be gelling as a team, but I'm quite sure that any Packer fan will tell you they'd rather have the roster they had during that first meeting rather than the roster they have now. But even if you insist that the Packers ARE better now, the Bears have improved at least as much if not more. They followed up the Packers win with a blowout loss at the Giants (where the mighty Todd Collins QB'd the 2nd half after Cutler's concussion), a win over a hapless Carolina team, and then back-to-back losses at home to Washington and Seattle before their bye. But following the bye the Bears went 7-2 over their final 9 games, losing to New England in a blizzard and then to Green Bay the last game of the year.
Three times this year the Bears have been 3-point home dogs (Packers, Eagles, and Patriots). Twice they shocked everyone and came out with victories. I think this Sunday will make #3, but at the very least the Bears will be in this one all the way till the end.
Now I'm just waiting until the Packer lovefest bids this one up to 4, at which point I'll probably throw 5 units on the line and 2 on the ML.
opcorn2
