A Quick One Before I Go to Bed

Things that I'm looking forward to seeing in tomorrow's game:

1) The Bears D-Line going after Manning. I know Rex has been a little fumble-prone since he's come back, but one thing that he hasn't done, and that really he hasn't done all year, are the stupid Tecmo drops where he gets scared of the rushing lineman and runs backwards and runs backwards some more until finally he gets sacked and it's gone from 2nd and 8 to 3rd and 30. Manning, though, still does that. At least, I saw him do it at the end of Vikings game last week, and the Bears D-Line is filled with far better pass rushers than the Vikings got. I'm totally looking forward to watching some Eli flop sweat tomorrow.

2) Adrian Peterson. Our Adrian Peterson. Even though I don't really expect his numbers to be too much of an improvement over what Benson would've ended up posting, probably, AP's got so much more fire than Benson does, and you can tell that for whatever reason the offense just works harder when Peterson's carrying the load. Or at least, they did during the end of the game last week. I mean, the whole line got together and actually pushed AP into the end zone after he'd run into a stack of Broncos. What are the chances they ever would've done something like that for Benson? I really really wanted to Benson to succeed this year, and I still kinda am holding out hope that he's going to turn into something and the team that he'll turn into something for will be the Bears, but for tomorrow I'm all about AP and his intensity. And you know he's been wanting this start for so long, and he's going to come out tomorrow with nothing but thoughts of tearing through NY's defense. It will be, at the very least, inspiring to watch.

3) Whatever craziness is going to happen with the Bears special teams. Overall I don't think the Bears special teams has been as good this year as they've been last year, but they've had Hester behind them the whole year which means that teams have been trying to think of creative ways to avoid kicking Hester the ball while also avoiding giving Chicago the ball at the forty or fifty yard line. Inevitably, this leads to me feeling superior to Chicago's opponents' special teams unit. Hester killed Denver this week, and you know that NY is thinking, "Whatever we do, we cannot get killed by Hester," but they're also NY's coaches which means they're stupid, so, on at least one kick they're going to do something hilarious. Sometimes, watching the Bears special teams play against other teams' special teams is like watching the Globetrotters against the Admirals, and I fully expect some of that dynamic to be in full display tomorrow.

Here's what I hope: that the Bears defense manages to put together it's first complete game of the season tomorrow. They don't even have to be totally dominant all game, but I want them to at least be there for the whole game. I mean, they're about due, right?