For the Chicago Bears, a proverbial step up in weight class comes in week two as they host the New York Giants. Chicago was extremely lucky in week one as the Detroit Lions let the game slip right through their finger tips, in true LOLions fashion, in the closing minutes.
For the Giants, they’ll have a much easier opponent this week, after getting pounded by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the season opener. Legendary former Steelers coach and now current CBS on NFL pundit Bill Cowher picked his former team to win it all this year.
“You look at the strength of schedule, the two easiest schedules in the National Football League, Baltimore and Pittsburgh,” Cowher said.
“There’s a guy named Ben Roethlisberger back for Pittsburgh. I say Pittsburgh goes back. Russell Wilson has a Seattle group of healthy quarterbacks. They go back.
“It’s a repeat of Super Bowl XL, Pittsburgh-Seattle.”
Maybe (okay probably) he’s biased, but a lot of NFL pundits and prognosticators are high on the Steelers.
“When coach Matt Nagy put (Nick) Foles and Trubisky in competition for the starting job, it looked like he was setting the stage for Foles to win the job,” said NFL on NBC analyst Peter King.
“Then a funny thing happened. After five weeks in competition, Trubisky won the job. But he didn’t win the job forever. And when he was firing high and wide again in the first half Sunday in Detroit, Bears fans agonized anew. Same old Trubisky.”
Trubisky, head coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace will all sink-or-swim together this season, and in the first half of last week, it appeared that a shipwreck was in progress. However, you had a good degree of smooth sailing (aided by Detroit being Detroit) in the fourth quarter, and maybe this might all work out in the end; maybe.
Whatever happens, the trio know their fortunes are tied to one another.
Trubisky, appearing on King’s show, on his game-winning touchdown pass to Anthony Miller late in the fourth quarter: “I’ll tell you what was crazy. I was watching the game on the plane home from Detroit, and that play came up, and the receivers coach, Mike Furrey, said to me, ‘You see what 12 [wide receiver Allen Robinson] did?’…Robinson’s got his back turned to the ball, can’t see it, but has his arms raised in the air before the ball even gets to Anthony Miller. He knew.”
Said King: “A rally like this one, and a strike like the winning throw to Miller, was, for one building-block week, something the Bears needed desperately. Nagy needed it too.”
“He’s joined at the hip with Trubisky, and was when he made the starting call 10 days ago…For one week at least, the promise of 2017 lives.”
One reason to bet the over here is Chicago could see their defense severely diminished on Sunday. Linebackers Khalil Mack (knee) and Robert Quinn (ankle) are both questionable. However, do the Giants have the weapons to exploit that?
Wide receiver Golden Tate is questionable with a hamstring injury while Saquon Barkley is yet to get on track this season. His numbers were brutally awful in the opener, and given what a talented and accomplished player he is, one could easily expect the former Penn State Nittany Lion to enter this weekend with a major chip on his shoulder.
Pick: NY Giants 24, Bears 14
These two teams have played some very memorable games over their long, illustrious histories, but this will be more forgettable! Look for Barkley to run wild.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
