I think I may try to do this weekly (though I’m going on vacation for the next two weeks, so I’m not sure how well I can keep up), but we’ll see. I’ll probably talk about Bears stuff quite a bit, but I’ll try to cover my take on all the other games too.

Well, one week down, and already it’s unpredictable. I’m in another fantasy league where we try to pick the winners every week, and oh man did I suck it up in the first week. Also lost in my fantasy game, thanks to the lousy performance by Dominick Davis (who I probably foolishly banked on having a good year). And like clockwork, my pastor dropped everyone on his fantasy team that didn’t do well in the first week, and picked up every obscure player that put up good numbers in the first game.

Well the season started off with a bang. Here’s the scene, an announcer comes on and says “To commemorate the 4th anniversary of the lives lost in September 11th, we bring you……. Jessica Simspon and Nick Lachey!!!!!” Okay so he didn’t yell it like a school girl at the end, but he may as well have. So the two shittiest pop stars on the planet come out and sing “America, the Beautiful,” complete with tons of weird facial maneurisms and enough vocal runs to make Christina Alguilera go “Hold on, that’s my thing.” I’m sure the victims of 9/11 were honored.

So after shaking off the mud of crappy music and superficial American pride, the season began. The Titans scored first, which no one saw coming, and then they never scored again and Pittsburgh destroyed them which we all saw coming (though I don’t think any of us predicted Willie Parker’s amazing debut). The Chiefs looked good, and they may have a defense now, which is scary. 49ers beat St. Louis? Dallas beats San Diego? Miami destroys Denver? (though I should say I predicted Denver to suck this year) The only thing you can predict with the NFL is that it will be unpredictable.

Okay, so now on to Bears talk (so most of you can stop reading now). The offense was not as bad as the score suggests, and the defense was a little worse than the score suggests. One thing with the Bears defense last year that has seemed to carry over this year, is that they can give up a lot of yards, but they always seem to keep us in the game, and they seem to get one red zone turnover every game. However, they can be a lot better than they were on Sunday, and I think they will be. And a big piece of good news is no injuries.

I didn’t expect Orton to do much, and I mainly just wanted to see him play the whole game, not get injured, and not lose his cool. And for the most part I think he did that. He was a little gun shy in the first half, but really settled down in the second half. The kid is smart and has the talent to be a solid quarterback, but he just needs to get comfortable, and it was nice to see that happen througout the course of the game. They blitzed the hell out of him, and it was great to see him adapt to that, and start pump faking to the blitz side, stuff like that. He really only made one major mistake (that did cost us a scoring chance) when he threw into triple coverage and got it picked off, but that’s still great for a rookie quarterback in his first start against a tough d. So I think we might be okay at QB, still not great, but about all we can hope for at the moment.

I also feel really good about our offensive line (and I know you think I’m nuts since they had three consecutive false starts), but I haven’t seen a QB of ours have that kind of time to throw in a LONG time. It’ll just be a matter of them gelling, and I think they could be really, really tough. With how much the Redskins blitzed, Orton was only sacked one or two times. Good sign (especially compared to last year).

I am a little worried about the running game, but I think Turner just gave up on it too quick. He knows better, and I’m sure the running game will play a bigger role next week against a decent rushing defense (but not nearly as good as the skins). Even though I like Thomas Jones, I still feel myself counting down the days until Bensen’s the go to guy. He just fits our team better, but I like Thomas Jones being the starter for the time being.

Well, there’s my thoughts for week 1. Unpredictable as always, and that only means that we’ll have another fun season.