Giants Gear Up For a Motivated Bears Team

Let me first say that all of us here at the Big Blue Review want to send out our condolences to Sean Taylor's family and friends, team mates and the thousands of Redskins fans for this week's tragic event that claimed Sean's life. Although the Giants and Redskins are rivals, lets not forget that it is just a game, and when something like this occurs it affects all players, teams and personnel.

====
It was the game that we all want to forget, especially Eli Manning. Four times the Giants were driving down the field to put the Vikings away, and each time Minnesota came away with interceptions, three of them returned for touchdowns.

Everyone has bad games. For Eli Manning, and hopefully Giants fans everywhere, this is as bad as he will ever get, and hopefully, we will never see it again.

For the past three games the Giants offense has been sputtering. Obviously not all Eli's fault, but the line has been playing mediocre as of late, the receivers can't seem to get open, and when they do, they either don't catch the ball or the fumble it.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Until last Sunday's game against the Vikings, these problems and issues were well hidden by the fact, the defense played extremely well, including two late picks against Detroit to seal the victory. The Giants defense didn't get the chance to bail the offense out this time as Manning made sure of that by hitting wide open Vikings players four times, twice inside the red zone.

Fast forward to this Sunday and the game against the defending NFC champion Chicago Bears. The Bears are struggling this year in all facets of the game, except for Devin Hester, who I believe can return a kickoff for a touchdown even if you had 100 guys trying to stop him. The guy is unbelievable and the Giants know it all too well. Let us not forget the 108 yard return for a TD off of a missed field goal, or as a Giants fan, maybe we should.

The Bears are coming off of an emotional win against the Broncos, but the 2007 Bears are not the 2006 Bears. This team is mediocre this year, and it took an overtime field goal to beat a Broncos team that just isn't that good.

As we saw against the Vikings, no game is a gimme. However, this is a game the Giants should win, and win fairly handily. There are questions though about Big Blue and that is, can the offense get back to where they were earlier in the year? If so, they should easily put this game away early. If not, the Giants could be in for another long game.

I think the Giants will win this game. This isn't the team of the last couple of years, when they seemed to collapse at the end. This team, for the most part, is healthy. Tom Coughlin's style of coaching and discipline have finally set in after four years. I also believe that loss against the Vikings, may have been the best thing to happen to this Giants team. It exposed their struggling offense, and now the coaching staff and the players must work harder to right the ship.

Regardless of the outcome, and the fact the Bears are struggling this year, this a great match up, with two of the league's storied franchises.

About the Author:
Michael C. Podlesny is the co-host of the Big Blue Review, a weekly podcast featuring the latest news on The New York Giants. The podcast can be downloaded from Michael's blog at http://BigBlueReviewPodcast.Blogspot.com.