The Bears hobble into Ford Field this Sunday to take on the offensively potent Detroit Lions in the first of three straight divisional games.  

The news of the week is of course the benching of Rex Grossman in favor of Brian Griese.  This could be the best possible team to play in hopes of getting a struggling offense moving.  Detroit comes in with a worse defensive rating than Dallas did last week.  They cannot stop the pass or the run, so the Bears have opportunities here to put up points and putting up points is exactly what they must do.  With the Bears balls to the wall, could this possibly be the time we see Devin Hester and Garrett Wolfe?  Highly unlikely.  I think if the Bears fail to put up some points, it might be time to start looking at how Ron Turner is calling games.  Even a crap offense should be able to do a little scoring against a D such as this.

Detroit boasts one of the best passing attacks in the league and they hit the worse possible time.  The Bears will likely be without their top two cornerbacks (Vashar claims he will play), forcing Ricky Manning and Corey Payne into stepping up.  Ricky Manning isn't the worst possible fill in, far from it actually.  The Bears do catch one break as it looks like Calvin Johnson might not be able to go.  Safety Adam Archuleta is playing with a broken hand which could also put more playing time on the table for Brandon McGowan and Kevin Payne.

The Bears will not have to worry about the Lions run game, because there simply isn't one.  The Lions come in averaging 67 total yards per game.  This could really help out the Bears D.  Not needing to stack the line will allow them to drop more into coverage and let this line go after the QB.

While this came isn't a make or break game for the Bears, it is an extremely important one.  With Green Bay looking to run away with things, they cannot let the Packers and Detroit get multiple game leads.