Bears players left and right are stating in interviews that they think this year's Bears team is going to be great. Recently, receiver Earl Bennett said in an interview that he thinks the Bears are the best team in the NFC North. Other players have expressed similar thoughts over the summer. Pro Bowl linebackers Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher have both stated in interviews this year that the 2012 Bears team is the best team they've been on, and that includes the Bears' 2006 SuperBowl run!

So are these sentiments even remotely accurate? Or are the players just a bit overconfident?

Well, in my humble opinion (as a Bears' fan), these players have every right to be excited about their team this year!

The NCAA Football 13 demo hit the PSN a few weeks ago, and I managed to play a few games before my PS3 went belly-up with a yellow-light-of-death last night. I can't do a very detailed breakdown of the demo because I don't have my PS3 at the moment in order to continue playing it. Hopefully, I'll get a working PS3 back in a week or two, but I have no guarantee that it will work. So in lieu of a full breakdown, I'll offer some simple observations and impressions.

First and foremost, it has already been announced that NCAA will not be including the new "Infinity Engine" that is being introduced to Madden with the intent of providing real-time physics simulation for collisions. NCAA is due out only about a month before Madden, so it seems like if EA really cared about providing the best game possible, then they would have just delayed the game a few weeks and added this feature to NCAA as well. But no, even though they have no other football game to compete with, and even though the college football season doesn't start till late August, EA insists on releasing the game in mid July. They have essentially relegated this year's NCAA game to being a second-class football game - which is a real shame because the NCAA dev team just seemed to show slightly superior effort that the Madden devs over the previous two years or so.

Unfortunately, if the demo is any indication (but that is the whole point of a demo), the lack of any real-time physics simulation won't be the only thing holding NCAA Football 13 back from greatness this year. The demo itself is a much better demo than what we've been given in the previous year, but the game being demoed doesn't seem that good...

Just came across this article on Kotaku about the new "Infinity Engine" that is supposed to introduce real-time physics simulation into Madden NFL 13.

Let me give you a minute to piece back together your blown mind.

That's right, Madden NFL is finally throwing out it's more-than-a-decade-old animation engine (developed for first-gen PlayStation 2 versions of the game) in favor of real-time physics simulation.

EA Sports has been releasing a series of "Madden 13 playbook" videos since May, but I haven't really been paying too much attention to them until now. The early playbooks were focused on presentation and relatively minor gameplay tweaks (the kind that we're used to seeing every year). Today's playbook (number 4), however, has me very excited!

I've been pretty harsh on Madden the past few years, but this video has me more excited about the game than I've been since Madden 10 (which turned out to be a flop).

Once again, this review is exceptionally late. The football season is almost over, and Madden has already sold its bazillion copies for this year. So anything I say here is kind of moot when it comes to helping people decide whether or not to buy this year’s game. But maybe – just maybe – my critiques will help the developers provide us with a better game in the 7 or so months that they have left to make Madden 13.

After being thoroughly disappointed with last year’s Madden game, and not being won over by either the new demo or the gameplay in NCAA 12, I didn’t rush out to buy Madden 12 on day one. I waited till September and bought the game used. This also contributed significantly to the tardiness of this review.

Overall, Madden still just seems uninspired, even when compared to EA’s NCAA Football game. All the same gameplay enhancements go into both games each year now, but NCAA has at least taken some efforts to better represent its sport. Setting up “linked” plays is simplistic but was a start towards a better representation of football strategy. Integration of the No-Huddle offense into the game is a bit clumsy, but is a major component of modern college football, and is thusly represented in that game. Requiring the QB to “read” the defense on option plays doesn’t work as well as last year, but it’s actually an important part of the option strategy. The collegiate look and atmosphere really looks and sounds like Saturday afternoons, and the ESPN integration is actually pretty slick at times.

• All the inspiration is going into the NCAA game
• So why's it so bad?
  • PRO-TAK is gone, and consecutive hits are in
  • No wasted motion wastes the game's potential
  • Pass blockers need to learn to double-team
  • Psychic defensive backs and passive receivers ruin the passing game
  • Will special teams ever be fixed?
  • Depth and simulation are sacrificed for the casual player
• Franchise gets some fan-requested attention
  • Recruiting fails to live up to its NCAA counterpart
  • “GamePlanning” feature doesn’t actually involve any game planning!
• Lazy presentation
• I honestly wish that EA would just drop Online play completely
• Nitpicking
• Conclusion

A few weeks ago, I stressed the importance of a Bears' victory over the Detroit Lions on November 13th following their week 9 defeat of the Eagles. That win was a big one, and with that win and a victory of the San Diego Chargers last week, both the Bears and Lions are tied for the top contenders for both of the NFC wild card playoff spots with the Bears going into one of the easiest collections of four games that any NFL team has on their schedule!

But the win over San Diego did not come without its cost. The Bears suffered several significant injuries, the most prominent being starting quarterback Jay Cutler....

UPDATE November 23, 2011 1:26 PM

Kyle Orton was picked up off of waivers by the Kansas City Chiefs, who were higher in the waiver order than Chicago. With Orton unavailable, the Bears have claimed Josh McCown. McCown hasn't played a game since 2009, so he will likely be an emergency option in the event that Hanie gets injured or performs poorly. The Bears also have rookie Nathan Enerle on their roster.