MVN: Most Valuable Network

Evidently the Bears have a different take on the NFL schedule from the other 31 teams in the league.

I think what's most irritating about Smith's comments about the season starting over with six games to go is that I'm not surprised, or even really all that angry. I mean, this is a team that can't even manage a game clock, so why should anyone expect them to know how to read a calendar?

Or maybe now is the time the Bears have decided to play like the team they claim to be - you know, the best team in the league. THAT'S what it is - the Bears have lulled the rest of the NFL in to thinking they're a delusional, overpaid, underachieving bunch of wasted talent, and now they can execute their master plan to show everyone who the best team in the NFL is!

Or maybe it's more of the same old mealy-mouthed crap.

I choose door number three, and if like me you think you've heard the beginning of this story before, you probably have a feeling the sequel is going to have a pretty similar ending too. The Bears are, in fact, 5-5 and tied for first in the brutally bad NFC North, but right now that's akin to being the prettiest Denny's waittress - not much of a compliment.

The Vikings and Packers are not without their flaws - remember, they're tied for the same sad-sack 5-5 record as the Bears are - but the Bears have simply not looked like a playoff-caliber team in the last three weeks, and remember, two of the Bears' five wins come against 0-9 Detroit.

Chicago's remaining schedule is the "easiest" amongst the three NFC North . . . "contenders", I guess is the word to describe the teams vying for the crown, but that's cold comfort given how badly the Bears have played. There's no such thing as a "gimme" win with this team, not in St. Louis, not anywhere.

If the Bears are to have any hope of making the playoffs, they need to put a good old-fashioned whipping on the Rams this weekend. A close victory over a team as bad as St. Louis is does nothing to prove the Bears are any kind of legitimate contender.

The Bears then visit Minnesota, host Jacksonville, New Orleans and Green Bay, and then end the season in Houston. You'd have to be incredibly optimistic to pick the Bears to get more than three wins out of the remaining six games. Minnesota will be looking for payback at the Metrodome and they already hung 41 on the self-proclaimed "best team in the league" in their first meeting. The Packers already blew the Bears out once and it would not surprise me to see them do it again. And while the Bears have sort of had New Orleans' number in recent years, I have a hard time buying in to them beating the Saints with the garbage pass defense they have.

That leaves the Rams, Jaguars and Texans as absolute must-win games, and I see the Bears flubbing at least one of those three. The Bears are going to be exposes for who they really are in the last six weeks - a bad football team. They'll finish 7-9, 8-8 at absolute best, and be sitting at home for the playoffs again.