Trying something new this week.  I’ll be commenting on all the day’s action at DaBearsBlog’s Twitter account and all those comments will be available right here on the site.  You can clink the above link and follow or just keep stopping by and see my running commentary.

The Bears are preparing to protest the playing of Monday night’s game outdoors at TCF Bank Stadium because they believe the surface of the ground might actually be frozen.  (This seems to me, in the concussion age, a valid argument.)  The Vikings don’t want to play in Indianapolis because they believe it will become a Bears home game (it would) and other options that are circulating now include moving the game to Atlanta – where ESPN will need to be next week anyway for the game between the Saints and Falcons next Monday night.  

Yours truly will appear with the Mouth of the Midwest on ESPN 1700 Des Moines at 4:30 PM CST (5:30 PM EST) today to discuss the Chicago Bears.  You can listen live here: ESPN 1700.

• I want Percy Harvin to start.  I have sung Dave Toub’s praises on this site for almost the entirety of his tenure with the Chicago Bears, crediting him for the league’s most successful kicking/kick return game over the second half of this last decade.  Was that credit deserved?  I don’t know.  I’m not sophisticated enough to be able to breakdown the performances of punt/kick return and coverage units without the advantage of game film and a staff of eight additional coaches who are paid to break down every second of a ballgame.  But one thing has become apparent to me watching the Bears special teams over the past three week (Eagles, Lions, Patriots): they are wasting their brilliance in the return game by failing to cover downfield.  If the Bears continue this trend, the playoffs will be a disaster against the solid return games of Philly, Atlanta and maybe even a club like Seattle.  I want Harvin to start and play well and test these units.
• How can we analyze the quarterback?  We can’t.  So we have to assume the Vikings are going to run the ball in the range of 30-40 times with both AP and Toby Gerhart.  Injuries along their offensive line will be a hindrance to this.
• What’s happened to the Vikings rush defense?  Eli Manning was throwing horrible interceptions all over the field and the Vikes allowed Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw to run the ball through them for 219 yards on only 25 carries. 
• Sidney Rice is all the way back from injury and has made a couple spectacular catches in the few weeks since his return.  This catch was my favorite.
• Visanthe Shiancoe’s interview after the Giants debacle revealed the kind of emotions you like to see from NFL athletes.  (I can’t find the video but it was airing on NFL Network.)  In the locker room he was saddened by the team’s failures and seemed ready to kill someone.  A tight end can’t do much on his own but if he can instill this passion in his teammates, don’t expect the Vikings to roll over.
• Les Frazier doesn’t strike me as the kind of coach that ever rolls over.  It doesn’t seem any of those ’85 Bears do.  Frazier is 2-1 as head coach, with tough games against the Bears and at the Eagles coming up before finishing with the Detroit Lions.  I would imagine Frazier sees this game as a brilliant line on his resume when sitting down with Zygi Wilf at season’s end.  If he beat the eventual division champion with a backup quarterback…how could they argue against him?

Bears Will Play Vikings at University of Minnesota

Frazier said the Vikings are considering a list of eight different free-agent quarterbacks whom they would consider signing this week and that there is a possibility one of those players could start.

Put another way, if Rodgers were the Lions’ quarterback, and Drew Stanton or even Shaun Hill was the Packers’ this season, the teams’ records would be about reversed. That’s with their rosters as currently configured, and I’m not sure things change that much even if the Packers were at full health. With Jermichael Finley and Ryan Grant playing, plus Hill at quarterback, maybe the Packers are .500. Maybe. 

No one know where the Bears and Vikings are going to play their Monday Night Football contest.  The Metrodome roof is about a shaky as Frank Omiyale’s blindside protection and TCF Bank Stadium – the outdoor facility home to the University of Minnesota’s football team – needs to know by the end of Tuesday whether to begin the process of unwinterizing their venue.  (I have never heard of unwinterizing something but I’m from New Jersey, where winters are just an excuse for radio stations to play Bruce Springsteen’s three-hour version of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.)  Wherever the game is played, one thing is certain: the outcome may go a long way to determining the fate of head coach Lovie Smith in Chicago.

The Vikings, in front of a somewhat national audience last night, looked like a shell of a football team.  The Giants ran the ball off left tackle at will, making Jared Allen and the Williams sisters look like third-rate Big Ten defenders.  (Their run game allowed a struggling Eli Manning to avoid throwing the ball much at all in the second half.)  Tarvaris Jackson played like a bad quarterback who hasn’t started in three seasons because he’s a bad quarterback who hasn’t started in three seasons.  (His interception toss to Keith Bulluck has to be one of the five worst throws of the 2010 season.)  The Giants played defense like Tarvaris wasn’t on the field, committing every player into the box and holding AP to a painful 26 yards on 14 carries.  The Vikings have no business being in a competitive game with the Bears, nevermind winning.

And that’s why Monday night is so important.    Lovie Smith has always divided the season into four quarters. The final quarter began as poorly as possible and now the coach finds himself in a Bye Week Revisited scenario – the charge being to keep his locker room from a downward spiral that leads to their missing the playoffs and his looking for sublets in Big Sandy, Texas. Coming off one of their most pathetic efforts of his tenure, Lovie must rebuild the confidence of a team that woke up Sunday morning believing they were a Super Bowl contender and returned to their beds thankful the Lions had defeated Matt Flynn and the Green Bay Packers.

As excited as that Packers defeat made us all, it becomes meaningless if the Bears do not defeat the Vikings Monday night.  A loss to the Vikings and the Bears will accrue their first division loss, forcing them to play for their postseason lives at Lambeau Field in Week 17, a healthy Aaron Rodgers certainly back on the field.  The Bears have an opportunity to close the 2010 NFC North campaign Monday night.  Against an inferior opponent.  Against a third-rate quarterback.  With the world at stake.  With the postseason within their grasp.  How Lovie Smith and the 2010 Chicago Bears respond to those conditions should tell us everything we need to know about the head coach moving forward. 

About fifteen minutes before kickoff of the Bears versus Patriots debacle in the amazing setting that was a snowy Soldier Field, the Lions beat the Green Bay Packers and handed our Wisconsin rivals their second loss in the NFC North.  As I walked over to to meet Shady and Noah at our seats in Section 120 I heard not one but several fans utter the same phrase.  “That makes this game meaningless now.”  To a certain extent, that sentiment was true and the Chicago Bears certainly played like it.  (Side note: Shady did the bloggers quite proud yesterday.  A good, good dude.)

I left.

Journalists around town are describing tomorrow’s showdown with the Patriots in a variety of ways.  Some are calling it a potential Super Bowl preview.  Some are calling it a litmus test for the Bears – qualifying their potential for a lengthy postseason run.  Some are calling it a game to be survived in the harshest conditions imaginable.  Some are calling it a somewhat irrelevant non-conference game, holding little weight in the tiebreaker scenario.  (The third tiebreaker for a division title is common opponents so this game will actually mean more for the NFC North race than the Bears loss to the Seahawks.)