Final thoughts:

• The first offensive drive is the most important offensive drive of the season. If the Bears collapse in protection and allow Cutler to be driven to the ground a time or two we could be staring down the barrel of a long final six weeks.
• If Jared Allen gets hot early he’ll stay hot. The Bears can win if Allen sacks Cutler three times but it’ll be considerably easier if he doesn’t.
• The run defense has come under some scrutiny due to a bit of statistical mismanagement by the Sun-Times’ Sean Jensen (and subsequently PFT). The Bears were run over by the San Francisco 49ers but they played solidly outside one drive against the Texans and dominated Chris Johnson until they took out ALL their starters in Nashville (with a thirty point lead). It is very easy to write “the Bears run defense is struggling” when Adrian Peterson is next on the schedule because AP usually gets his. One thing is certain: when AP is in the backfield, run defense is all that matters.
• It’ll be interesting to monitor the crowd today. Bears fans are an irrational lot and I could see them treating a 7-3 teams like a 3-7 team if things don’t start the way they’d like.
• Lost in the awfulness of San Francisco was Adam Podlesh having his best night punting all year. (I’m going to do pop culture here, which I rarely do, but I’m making an exception for material I believe has reached classic status.) To paraphrase the great Lou Brown of Major League, “You punted well today, Adam. If you punt well again tomorrow that’s called a winning streak.”

Bear down.