Sunday 4:30 PM ET

Green Bay Packers at Philadelphia Eagles (-4.5)

Packers are 7th against the run.

Eagles are 10th against the run.

But I would argue it is far more important for the Packers to establish the run in this game than it is for the Eagles. Jordan Love is not a great quarterback. He’s not going to be able to drop back 40 times Sunday and dice up this Philly secondary without being harassed by their deep front.

Vic Fangio is usually great in these spots; he’ll show Love looks he hasn’t shown another team this season. I wish the line was 2.5, but it’s not. I’ll survive. Lay the points.

Sunday 8:00 PM ET

Washington Commanders at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-3)

The hardest game for me to predict this weekend.

Tampa just needed to beat a lifeless Saints team Sunday to win the division title, and they struggled mightily. Jayden Daniels has been good in 2024, but he’s still a rookie quarterback starting a playoff game on the road. This feels like the game with the widest range of potential outcomes.

I’m looking to the same stat as I did in the previous game to choose a winner. Tampa allows 97.8 yards per game on the ground, fourth in the league. Washington allows 137.5 yards per game on the ground, 30th in the league. Bucky Irving is the most talked about player this wildcard weekend. Lay the points.

Monday 8:00 PM ET

Minnesota Vikings (-1.5) at Los Angeles Rams 

This game is entirely about Sam Darnold.

A week ago, the talk around the league was Minnesota committing long term to Darnold and dealing J.J. McCarthy to the highest bidder. But after Darnold laid an egg versus Detroit in arguably the biggest game of his career, will that narrative continue if he lays another in L.A. on Monday night in what is inarguably the biggest game of his career?

I’m rooting for the Darnold career resurgence, but I think he’s going to struggle with serious pressure in this spot. Take the points.

Quarter One 

There were four stories to this quarter.

• The strip and recovery by Jonathan Owens stabilized the game for Chicago. There’s a different game script that plays out if the Vikings score easily there.
• The Bears don’t have a pass rush. Zero. Ryan Poles has so much work to do on both lines this off-season.
• The touchdown drive for the Bears was Caleb Williams’s best drive as a professional. That was superstar stuff from the kid, and continued evidence that Thomas Brown is not a coach to be thoughtlessly discarded after the season.
• Last thirty seconds of the quarter are everything wrong with Matt Eberflus as the head coach. Bad, undisciplined penalty. Inexcusable deep completion. Eberflus is the team’s primary vulnerability.

Quarter Two

• After the Keenan Allen overturn, Eberflus takes the ball out of his quarterback’s hands on fourth and short. Once again, Flus displays that he has no feel for the football game in front of him. But more importantly, it’s far more valuable long-term for Caleb TO FACE that situation. The team is going in multiple directions because the organization refuses to move on from Flus.
• If you lose a game on a blocked FG, and the next FG attempt is blocked, that is coaching, coaching, coaching. (The broadcast made this clear in their subsequent commentary.)
• Bears end up with a field goal on the final drive, after their sideline shows no urgency or command.

Vikings 14, Bears 10

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VIKINGS -2.5 v. Lions

The early part of the season has belonged to the 5-0 Minnesota Vikings, the most surprising team in the NFL. But if they lose Sunday, Minnesota will relinquish the top spot in the NFC North and suddenly be thrust into the middle of the best division in the league.

Coming into this season, Detroit was the betting favorite to find themselves representing the NFC in the Super Bowl. Last Sunday was bittersweet for the club; they thoroughly humiliated Dallas but lost one of the best defensive players in the league.

Early season NFL games don’t get much better than this. I think the Lions make a statement and realign the conference stars.

Lions 34, Vikings 24

PACKERS -2.5 v. Texans

Matt LaFleur has masterfully kept the Packers above water, even with a temporarily injured quarterback and a temperamental wide receiver. Through six weeks of the season, he’s my coach of the year.

The Texans are 5-1 and look like they’ll have the AFC South locked down well before Macy’s inflates the Snoopy balloon. They bring to Green Bay one of the league’s best pass rushes, but Green Bay might have the best pass protection in the league. If Houston doesn’t win on the edge, they don’t win.

Packers 26, Texans 20

Three More Bets

• STEELERS +1.5 over Jets. Russell Wilson is not an upgrade over Justin Fields, but I don’t think the Jets can block Pittsburgh. Prediction: Tyrod Taylor sees action Sunday night.
• Panthers at COMMANDERS (Over 51.5). If you told me the Commanders scored 50 in this game, I am not sure I would argue with you. Commanders can score in bunches and can’t defend the pass. Feels like a 37-27 kind of game.
• BILLS -8.5 over Titans. Bills v. Jets was one of the worst football games I have ever watched, but the Bills must be flying high after winning a road game wherein they allowed a Hail Mary and missed a bunch of kicks. With the division now firmly in their grasp, they roll at home against Will Levis, the funniest quarterback in the league.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

An 18-Week Sidney Lumet Syllabus

This season, I’m trying something different. Instead of using this space to randomly comment on culture, there will be a recurring theme: the work of Sidney Lumet. Lumet is one of America’s most prolific cinematic artists, and yet is dramatically underrepresented by the critical and academic communities. My long-term mission is to remedy that injustice, and I’ll be using this space to work through concepts, notes, etc.

There’s a poetry to this decision, as well. Lumet was born in 1924, making this his centennial. As my book on Lumet is still years from reaching the desk of a publisher, I’m thrilled to celebrate his 100th birthday right here on this little old blog Noah and I started two decades ago.

Below you’ll find the syllabus. Why am I publishing this? Because if you’re interested in taking a “class” on Lumet, this is your opportunity. There are fourteen films listed and each of them is rentable on one platform or another for a few bucks. If you want a thorough appreciation of a great filmmaker, and also to understand what we do in the Cinema Studies world, I welcome you to watch the films each week and follow along. And any questions you might have along the way, simply email me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.

Week 2: Lumet and The Group Theater

Week 3: Early Television Aesthetics and 12 Angry Men

Week 4: Stage Adaptations

Week 5: The Pawnbroker and Post-War Memory

Week 6: Fail Safe and the Cold War

Week 7: The Sean Connery Collaborations, or Lumet Abroad

Week 8: Serpico, Prince of the City, and the Police

Week 9: Dog Day Afternoon

Week 10: Network and Auteur Theory

Week 11: New York City in The Wiz

Week 12: The Verdict

Week 13: Garbo Talks in the Middle of Ronald Reagan

Week 14: Sins of the Father: Daniel, Running on Empty, and Family Business

Week 15: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Post-9/11 New York

Week 16: The Legacy of Lumet’s Seminal Book, Making Movies

Week 17: Final Thoughts and Bibliography

Three Thoughts on the Titans

• Tennessee had arguably the strangest offseason is the NFL. They fired their well-respected coach and looked poised to enter a rebuilding period. They did not. Instead, they were one of the most active teams in free agency, bringing in a collection of expensive veterans and role players. After all of those moves, the Titans still find themselves, according to DraftKings Sportsbook, with the longest odds to win the NFC South at 10-1. (For comparison, the Colts are the third favorite at about 3.5-1.)

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Contextualizing 3-8 (It’s About the Head Coach)

Should the Bears have beaten the Broncos? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.

Should the Bears have beaten the Lions? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.

Mediocre work on the sidelines would have the Bears 5-6 this season, which is exactly where most of us believed they would be at the Thanksgiving holiday. But the coaching, specifically the work from head coach Matt Eberflus, is the reason the Bears are (well) behind their 2023 targets/expectations.

Will Justin Fields be the starting quarterback in 2024? Who knows, but clearly his performance against the Lions last week made some of his more vocal critics, including myself, leave that door slightly ajar. Personally, I just don’t care anymore. Bring him back, don’t bring him back, whatever. I think Fields is good enough to win games but not good enough to be the reason you win a championship. But Josh Allen can’t even get to an AFC Championship Game while Brock Purdy is throwing up perfect quarterback ratings in blowout victories…so maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. I mean, would you rather have Fields or Jared Goff? I think I prefer Fields.

But Eberflus is never going to be a top head coach. That’s apparent on the sidelines almost every week. If the ceiling for Fields is “not the reason you win a championship,” the ceiling for Eberflus is .500.

The Christmas Movie Guide

This year, I’m going with ten films. Ten films only. I’ll be watching more than 40 Christmas movies over the next month, but it is time to make the difficult choices. It is hard to leave off films like Santa Claus the Movie and Jingle All the Way and Christmas with the Kranks and Noelle. It was not hard to leave off films I simply don’t like, including the perennial downer It’s a Wonderful Life and the wildly overrated A Christmas Story.

Three films worth noting here.

• Klaus is slowly climbing into my top ten and would probably sit 11th currently.
• While I believe White Christmas is a wonderful movie, it has almost nothing to do with his Christmas. It is a movie more about snow than Christmas.
• I am not including A Very Murray Christmas, even though I will watch it at least a dozen times in the next month, because it’s not really a movie.

10. Scrooged (1988). The most beautifully written and performed speech in the Christas movie canon.

9. The Santa Clause (1994). The sequels are unwatchable, but the original is both sardonic and sweet hearted.

8. Die Hard (1988). I have gone back and forth on the “is Die Hard a Christmas movie” debate but I think Michael Kamen’s use of Silent Night in the score solidifies its standing in the corpus. It is the best movie on this list, but only the eighth best Christmas movie.

7. Home Alone (1990) *

*Home Alone 2 should be consumed for ironic purposes only, but it SHOULD be consumed. I will have a full game preview section on Home Alone 2 before Christmas. 

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

On the Potentiality of an Interesting Season

Thought experiment.

Pretend Matt Eberflus’ brain didn’t turn to hot soup against the Denver Broncos and the Bears won that ballgame. The team would be 2-3, on the periphery of the wildcard conversation, with a chance to win their third straight against a Justin Jefferson-less Minnesota Vikings this Sunday. This would be a massive contest.

But Eberflus’ brain did turn to split pea, and this is not a massive contest. But that doesn’t mean it is unimportant. Just remember, if the Bears win Sunday, they will be 2-4, with a mediocre Raiders team coming to town next week, bringing with them a big, shiny opportunity to be 3-4. And isn’t hovering around .500 with an improving Justin Fields exactly what most of us expected from this campaign?

The Bears could not lose that Broncos game. And they did. Because of that, they needed to win the next three in order to insert relevance into their season.

Washington. √

Minnesota. [ ]

Los Angeles [ ]

Stats of the Week

• Bears have started solving their run game, increasing their average to north of 130 yards per game in recent weeks. That is 50 yards more per game on the ground than Minnesota averages. This is Chicago’s most significant advantage.
  • The Vikings and Steelers are the only teams in the NFL without a rushing touchdown.
• Justin Jefferson is 6th in catches, 3rd in total yards, 1st in big plays. His absence cannot be overstated; he is the best player on this team by a significant margin and it is a huge advantage for the Bears that he won’t be playing. Minnesota still has receiving talent, especially TJ Hockenson and Jordan Addison, but those players should prove far more manageable without Jefferson on the field.
• Only one quarterback has thrown more touchdown passes than Justin Fields: Kirk Cousins.

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The Chicago Bears shouldn’t be favored to win the NFC North, but they certainly have a shot to take what is now a weak division. The Lions are the favorites, and rightfully so, but Detroit missed a major opportunity to improve at key positions and further separate themselves from the rest of the division. The Minnesota Vikings are the defending champions, but their limp to the finish line brings up many questions. And the Packers, well, where do we start?

These are things Ryan Poles was surely looking at when he told The Athletic the team should contend for the NFC North. Here’s a quick snapshot at each of the teams and why the Bears could top them.

Detroit Lions

There’s a lot to like about the Detroit Lions but that can be found all over the internet. In short, the Lions had a top-five offense in 2022 and their defense allowed a hair over 20 points per game in the second half of the year. They finished 8-2 with convincing wins over the Vikings and Packers.

But there are issues with the Lions that are largely going ignored.

• They need quarterback Jared Goff to continue playing at a level at which he has not previously played.
• They need him to do this while being shorthanded at wide receiver. Losing DJ Chark wasn’t supposed to be significant because Jameson Williams was going to fill the void, stretching the field vertically, but Williams has been suspended for six games for gambling. Without Chark’s speed on the field — he missed six games — the powerful Lions offense averaged fewer than 20 points per game last year.
• The team made considerable investments in the running back position, but was that really a weakness last year? Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift combined for more than 1,600 rushing yards, with an average of 4.45 per carry and had 22 rushing touchdowns. Swift caught 48 passes for 389 yards and three more touchdowns. If they upgraded, it’s hard to see them being more productive.
• There’s also the matter of Ben Johnson. There’s no question that he is a bright offensive mind, but now teams will have a full season of work to study and figure out how to stop him.

We can comfortably assume Detroit’s defense will improve, after being bottom-five in both scoring and yardage last year. How much is a bit of a mystery, though. They made some improvements in the secondary but spent a first-round pick on an inside linebacker — a position that wasn’t a strength, but also not necessarily a weakness.

On paper, the Lions should be favored to win the NFC North. But it isn’t hard to see why that might not happen.

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