Monday Night Football Betting: Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings

Added on Dec 20, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

The Chicago Bears will head to the Twin Cities to take on the disappointing Minnesota Vikings, and they may be more comfortable with the surroundings than the ‘home’ team since this game will be played outdoors at TFC Bank Stadium. The Metrodome is still not an option following last week’s roof collapse and the best ‘Plan B’ is the home stadium of the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.

Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings
December 20, 2010 5:35 PM Pacific

Chicago should win this game, but we have no interest in laying more than a TD on the road with the erratic Bears–even against a Minnesota team playing out the string. Instead, we’ll focus on the extremely low total of 33 for this game. Vikings will start third stringer Joe Webb with Brett Favre and Tavaris Jackson both on the shelf with injuries. Webb is inexperienced, but at this stage of the game is really not much of a dropoff from Favre or Jackson. Bears will be looking to bounce back from that embarrassing performance at home in the snow and wind against New England last week and will likely face similar weather conditions here. Forecast is for snow though the weather will be relatively warm by Twin Cities standards–kickoff temperature is expected to be in the mid 20′s and isn’t expected to get much lower through the night.

The low total for this game looks to be a clear overreaction to public perception about the loss of Favre and the outdoor venue. Vikings’ punter Chris Kluwe stirred the pot some more with this Twitter post about the ‘unplayable’ field conditions:

“The field is as hard as concrete an hour and a half after they took the tarp off, and anyone that hits their head is getting a concussion. … I find it interesting that the NFL can claim an emphasis on player safety, and then tell us the field is fine. It’s beyond hypocritical. … I can only hope, however unlikely, that no one gets catastrophically injured at the trainwreck that’s about to take place tomorrow night.”

We get that its not as posh as the Vikings’ usual digs, but this is a punter on a team going nowhere. We also get that NFL players are bigger and faster than their college counterparts, but the Minnesota Golden Gophers play on this field without any undue carnage so we’re thinking that Kluwe is overreacting somewhat.

In any case, we’re going to look to play Over the low total. 3 of the last 5 games head to head have gone Over, and all 5 saw more than 33 points scored. The last five totals between the teams–40, 66, 46, 48 and 89. Both teams’ offenses are capable of laying an egg at any time, but given the history of the series we’re thinking that the low total is a kneejerk overreaction to the venue and Favre’s absence.

Bet Chicago Bears/Minnesota Vikings Over 33