The Sunday warm-up acts for Monday night’s Bears-Arizona game further established the Bears as the team to beat in the NFL.
Who would have thought the New Orleans Saints, at 5-1, would be in closest NFC pursuit of the Bears after an impressive and surprising 27-24 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles?
And the New York Giants look to be the next big test for the Bears on Nov. 12 after the defending NFC East champions handled the Falcons 27-14 in Atlanta.
After only six weeks, everybody is chasing the Bears, and strong NFC teams like the Eagles, Falcons and surprising St. Louis Rams are gaining no ground.
Neither are the Cincinnati Bengals nor Baltimore Ravens after both supposed AFC North powerhouses dropped their second games in a row. That allowed the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, who pounded the Kansas City Chiefs 45-7 to quickly rebound from three straight losses, to signal that this season still has a long way to go.
After having next week off, the Bears host the San Francisco 49ers and Miami Dolphins, both losers Sunday and possessing only three wins between them. After that the Bears embark on a three-game eastern trip that looked challenging even before Sunday.
They play the Giants, Jets and New England Patriots in successive weeks. Of the three, the Jets looked easiest, but they have beaten both the Buffalo Bills and Dolphins and thus represent a step up from those two Bears foes.
One of the fortuitous circumstances of the Bears’ season is that the balanced NFC East and NFC South have to play each other, allowing the Bears the advantage of watching them knock each other off while the Bears coast to the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
Coast? Having already dispatched the defending NFC champion Seattle Seahawks of the West, it would be a huge disappointment now if the Bears are unable to secure home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
By beating the Rams 30-28 on a last-second field goal Sunday, the Seahawks did the Bears a favor by putting more distance between the 5-0 Bears and the Rams, their next Monday night opponent on Dec. 11. Until Sunday, the 4-2 Rams had been as big an NFC surprise as the Saints.
The NFC East and South battles left two potential pursuers disappointed. The Giants went to Atlanta and upended the Falcons. The Eagles, trying to rebound in the East, went to New Orleans and lost to the Saints.
This means that every team in the NFC besides the Bears, Saints and Seahawks has at least two losses. If the Bears beat the Cardinals on Monday night–and they remain 11-point favorites–they will maintain at least a two-game lead on every NFC team except the Saints, whom they don’t play in the regular season.
The Saints toppled the hot Eagles, who had climbed to the top of the NFC East and had the only quarterback in the conference with a higher passer-efficiency rating than the Bears’ Rex Grossman.
But even though Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb threw for two touchdown passes in the second half, the Saints kept their magic alive in the reopened Superdome behind another potential NFC challenger to Grossman at quarterback, Drew Brees.
The matchups are bound to get harder for the Bears, though not yet.
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The 49ers’ second-year quarterback, Alex Smith, threw two touchdown passes Sunday against San Diego, but his 2-4 team got pounded 48-19.
The Dolphins are still starting Joey Harrington in place of Daunte Culpepper as coach Nick Saban discovers that castoff quarterbacks from the NFC North aren’t the answer to anything except trouble.
But Nov. 12 in New York, the Bears face the Giants’ Eli Manning, who outplayed Atlanta’s Michael Vick on Sunday. Then they face the Jets’ Chad Pennington, whose passer rating of 89.2 entering the weekend was higher than any quarterback the Bears have faced thus far.
Likewise, New England’s Tom Brady and the Rams’ Marc Bulger, as well as Manning, are rated higher than any Bears opponent so far, including last year’s NFC passing champion, Matt Hasselbeck of Seattle.
Hasselbeck threw three touchdown passes against the Rams on Sunday, matching Bulger, but the Bears already have put the Seahawks in the rearview mirror.
NFC South teams Carolina and Tampa Bay knocked off favored AFC North teams Baltimore and Cincinnati, respectively. The 4-2 Panthers and redoubtable Steve Smith may again turn out to be among the Bears’ biggest NFC hurdles in the postseason, but it was the first win for the defending division champion Buccaneers.
The Bears play neither the Panthers nor Bucs in the regular season, nor do they play the Eagles or Dallas Cowboys from the NFC East. But they all play each other while the Bears observe, presumably from their lofty perch.
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