NFL Monday Night Preview: Chicago Bears at Detroit Lions

The Detroit Lions play their first Monday Night Football game tonight in ten years. Frank Doyle weighs up the odds.

The Chicago Bears are in the unusual position of going to Detroit tonight as an NFL betting underdog. The Bears have a 93-64-5 record against the Lions but you can take Chicago +6 tonight. These aren’t the Lions we’re used to.

Detroit is enjoying its best start to a season in over half a century. The Lions are 4-0 straight up and 3-1-0 against the spread. Ndamukong Suh sets the tone on defense, and the hope is that he’ll be joined in the trenches by first round pick Nick Fairley tonight. That line is guaranteed to create havoc.

It’s only the quarter-pole stage of the season but if things project as they have been doing, Matthew Stafford and Calvin “Megatron” Johnson could become one of the great quarterback-receiver combinations in the league. That’s how productive they’ve been.

Calvin Johnson is an outstanding athlete – Stafford can throw him jump balls knowing that Johnson is athletic enough to outjump the secondary, and big and strong enough to not get pushed around while he’s doing it. The only sensible reaction of any defensive co-ordinator to Megatron is sheer blind terror.

The Bears have been struggling. Chicago is 2-2 straight up and 1-3-0 ATS. The Bears had good home wins over Atlanta and Carolina, but they were outclassed in New Orleans and by Green Bay in Soldier Field. The offense can produce when the offensive line is working but when it breaks down it’s bad news for Da Bears.

Which doesn’t mean the Bears visit the Motor City entirely without hope. Chicago will have noticed that the Lions have spotted both the Vikings and the Cowboys big leads in the past two games, before coming back to win. That’s playing with fire in any football league, and one of these days it’s going to catch up with them.

Really, Dallas should have beaten Detroit if Tony Romo had taken better care of the football, and if the Dallas offense made some tackles and stopped to those INTS being taken all the way back to the house. That’s a fourteen point swing. You can’t rely on getting that in every game.

The over/under for the game is set at 47.5, which reflects the deep threat of both offenses. The Bears and Lions have averaged totals of exactly that, 47.5, in the past five years, and that goes up to 51.2 in games played in Detroit. Something else for bettors to think about as they get ready for some football returning to the Motor City on Monday night.