If the Thursday night game had a flex option I suspect tonight’s Prime telecast would have opted for a different matchup. The primetime game tonight has the Carolina Panthers visiting Soldier Field to meet the Chicago Bears. These are two National Football Conference teams that have combined for three wins and 14 losses this season.
One team is forced to start an undrafted backup quarterback and the other has the first pick in the draft running their offense. Thing is, the undrafted player, Chicago’s Tyson Bagent, has as many wins in three starts that the first pick in the draft, Bryce Young, has accumulated in eight starts. One.
Tonight, the Bears will again be led by Bagent as one-time first-round draft choice, Justin Fields, continues to recover from a thumb injury on his throwing hand. It is rare that a team with two wins through the first half of the season is both favored on the point spread and a popular play among most bettors. But that is where Chicago finds themselves tonight.
Chicago came into this season with high hopes. Beginning his second season as head coach in the Windy City, Matt Eberflus thought all the pieces were in place to compete in the NFC North Division. First, because he thought his team would be better, and second, the competition in this division has taken a nosedive.
Gone from the Green Bay Packers was their longtime brilliant signal caller, Aaron Rodgers, and that threw doubt into whether the Packers could maintain their lofty standards.
They haven’t. The Packers come into play this week with two more losses than wins. The Minnesota Vikings were also expected to be down a notch this year, and early in the campaign, after the Vikings opened with three straight losses, there were rumors that the Vikings were looking to trade their starting quarterback, Kirk Cousins. Then, after that rocky start, the Vikings got two wins over the next three Sundays, both against the two teams in action tonight. Minnesota got their first win of the season over the Panthers, 21-13, and earned a second victory two weeks later in Chicago against the Bears, 19-13.
Those two wins were not yet an indicator that Minnesota was on any major step up, but three more wins leading into this week does bode well for the Vikings. Victories that included triumphs over the San Francisco 49ers, Packers and Atlanta Falcons. The win over Green Bay came at a cost, as Minnesota lost Cousins for the year with an injury. The victory over Atlanta last week was spiked by newly acquired quarterback Josh Dobbs, who admitted he didn’t know the names of all the players in his huddle but was able to lead them to victory.
Then, there is the Detroit Lions to round out the four teams the Bears compete against in their division. The Lions were bad for so many years it is a jolt to the system to realize Detroit is ebbing towards the top of the league in a season they started with a road win over the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas CIty Chiefs in the traditional Thursday night season opener.
The Bears are not likely to catch any of the three teams ahead of them in the NFC North Division standings, but still most figure they have the talent to win tonight and cover a 3½ point spread.
The Panthers, conversely, are also competing in a division with mediocre talent. Only the New Orleans Saints have a winning record in the NFC South Division, they are 5 and 4 on the season. Still, like the Bears, the Panthers are unlikely to catch the three teams in front of them, which include in addition to the Saints a Falcons team with four wins and five losses, and the 3 and 5 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
So, now you know why this matchup is about as uninteresting as an NFL contest could be. But, we have an antidote to make it interesting.
Bet on the Panthers, they are going to win.
Qoxhi Picks: Carolina Panthers (+3½) over Chicago Bears