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.

The Chicago Bears played a pretty impressive all-around game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, winning 30-24 after their bye.

It's really hard for me to give MVP credit to any single player or unit on the Bears. The defense did a fantastic job of containing Mike Vick, limiting him to just a few dozen rushing yards, picking him off once, and never letting him throw it into the endzone. But the defense alone doesn't deserve all the credit, as Vick made some bad throws and his receivers dropped some wide open passes, D.J. Moore dropped two gimme interceptions, and DeSean Jackson tripped and fell short of converting a last-minute fourth down to keep the Eagles in the game. And the only reason that LeSean McCoy didn't torch the Bears for triple-digit rushing yards was because the Eagles were playing from behind for most of the game...

Last week, I offered my thoughts on the NFL's rule change regarding reviews of scoring plays. In summary, I thought the rule was stupid. It's unfair, as the rule only requires plays that are called as "touchdowns" on the field to be reviewed. It ignores plays that might have been touchdowns, but which were ruled as not a touchdown on the field. This rule bit the Dolphins in the butt last week, but was not a game-deciding issue.

This week, a new problem with the rule change was exposed: if coaches are expecting a "scoring" play to be reviewed by the booth, they aren't going to throw the challenge flag. But what if the booth doesn't make the decision to review the play in time?

One of the NFL's new rule changes for this year is that the booth will now automatically review all plays that are called as touchdowns on the field without needing the play to be challenged by a coach.

It sounds good in principle.

Make sure that teams aren't getting points put up on the board when they shouldn't be.

But what about the inverse?

The rule is that only plays that are called as touchdowns on the field are being reviewed. For plays that are incorrectly called as not a touchdown, the coach still has to use a challenge.

So the NFL is making sure that points aren't put up on the board when they shouldn't be, but they're not making sure that points do go up when they should. Why the hell not?

It's a debate that's been going on for a decade: Is Tom Brady better than Peyton Manning?

Tom Brady has more championships, so the conventional wisdom would say that yes, Brady is superior.

But I think this week's season opener proves otherwise.

This Sunday marked the first time since 1997 that Peyton Manning was not the Indianapolis Colts' starting quarterback.

Championships aren't the only measure of quality for an NFL quarterback. Remember, Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. He's easily the best player in Super Bowl era of NFL history to have never won a Super Bowl, and he's one of - if not the - best quarterbacks in history. And Manning does in fact have a ring! He won it against my Bears in 2006. But if somebody was going to beat the Bears in the Super Bowl, I'm glad it was Manning. The guy deserves it!

So how else can we compare them?