NFL Schedule Makers Don’t Do Chicago Bears Any Favors
The Bears have had an interesting 2011
schedule to say the least. We know that players like a routine. For the Bears, that means noon games on Sunday. Deviating from that can prove to be challenging.
Monday night’s win over the Eagles was the Bears’ fourth straight night game. Even though we watched the game at Noon, the Bears played under the lights at 6PM in London, another schedule quirk in and of itself that’s made things tough on the Beloved.
The next two games against the Detroit Lions and San Diego Chargers, both home games, provide another couple of unique challenges. Check it out after the jump.
First up, the Detroit Lions head to Soldier Field for a 3:15 kickoff. While it’s kind of an honor to get moved back to be a featured game in the double header, it throws these guys off. To make matters worse, the Bears get the Lions in this crucial divisional matchup coming off a bye while they’re working on a short week, having just played on Monday Night Football. As one of my commenters pointed out, and it’s such a great point that it inspired this post, there is no way that a team coming off a Monday Night game should have to play a team coming off a bye. It’s just not fair.
The next opponent after that is the San Diego Chargers, who kick off the NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football 2011 season with a matchup against the Oakland Raiders. But guess what? They don’t play again until they head to Soldier Field for another 3:15 kickoff. So the Chargers get an extra 3 days to rest up to prepare for the Bears and their trip east. Besides, one of the disadvantages of coming across two time zones is they’re supposed to be playing at like 10 AM according to their body clocks. By kicking off later in the day, it’s the Chargers’ usual start time.
I guess the Bears will just have go out and win these next two without any favors from the NFL schedule makers.