Pickin' Pigskin with Bob and Steve and Kristin: Week 10, Part 1

Steve: Chicago +3

Games start tonight this week, which kind of stinks. I've always thought that Thursday night football feels, well, wrong. Thursday is the night for clever comedies like The Office and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Anyway, on to the game at hand. For some reason, I favor the Bears. Why? Ehhh. I just think I've been going against them too much lately. I consider the Bears and 49ers to be equally frustrating, enigmatic teams. They're not Illmatic or even Stillmatic like Nas; more like the exact opposite of those two landmark releases from him. (By the way, Jay-Z is a lot better than Nas, who has inconsistent quality.)

To me, it comes down to Cutler vs. Smith, and I think that the Bears defense will be able to shut down Smith this week, since they have two game tapes of him to breakdown now. Also, it's finally time that Forte does something, even if he isn't on my fantasy team. I think he breaks out a bit against San Fran.

Bob: San Francisco -3

Well, thanks for the jinx last week, Steve. I'll take it as a moral victory that even though you blatantly jinxed me, I still am in first place overall. You know you're in bad shape when flipping a coin on the games would have destroyed your so-called "expert" analysis (although if anybody considers me an NFL expert, they need to get their head checked). With the formalities out of the way, to the game...

This is actually a very winnable game for the Bears. The match-up seems to favor them, in that their good passing game is going against a less-than-stout 49ers pass defense. Their pass defense is also above average and will likely give Alex Smith some fits (considering the stinker that he laid last week). There is a part of me that wants to pick the Bears.

But wait, wasn't it just a few days ago that I wrote "I don’t know why I keep picking da Bears?" To quote Pete Townshend, "I won't get fooled again." Although neither of these teams has shown any ability to beat good teams (the Bears only beat the temporarily frazzled Steelers early in the year, followed by Seattle, Detroit, and Cleveland, while the 9ers only beat an up-and-down Arizona team followed by Seattle and St. Louis), at least San Fran has shown the ability to hang in there by nearly knocking off the then-unbeaten Vikings and currently unbeaten Colts. They can't close, but that won't be a problem because the Bears can't even keep it close. Interesting aside: Did you know that Frank Gore is averaging more than 5 yards per carry?

Kristin: San Fran -3

I'll take San Fran since the Bears have been pathetic lately.