A personal Bears fan's experiance at New Orleans/ Game breakdown

   I'm back everybody, and well the outcome wasn't near that of what I expected, but I still had a great time nontheless. Lots to talk about, both the game and the town itself.

   Basically I stayed the weekend at the Days Inn on the east side of New Orleans. It had decent room service and it was close to a lot of resteraunts so for the most part it was a good stay. On Sunday morning before the game I drove to park somewhere close enough to Cafe Du Monde where I could walk in little time. There, I had an order of beignets and cafe ole, which if you have been to New Orleans yet never to CDM, well you have to go. The place was packed with Bears fans, so I didn't feel so isolated wearing my navy Brian Urlacher jersey with many Saints fans off in the distance. Then, I got with some fellow Bears fans and we walked to the Super Dome all the way from Cafe Du Monde. It was humid, but otherwise pleasant weather, and the Super Dome was air conditioned so I wasn't worried about being all tired and overheated by gametime. I had tickets to the visitor's side towards the top where I hoped there would be an army of Bears fans around me. Boy, was I wrong! The stadium was packed and although there were enough Bears fans so where I can see some pockets of navy and orange, it clearly was the Saint's home turf. I was literally the only Bears fan in my respective corner of the stadium, everyone else was dawning the gold and black. But, surprisingly enough, as being a well behaved individual myself, all of the Saints fans were the same. Unlike my experiance at Atlanta, they were welcoming of my presance, despite my loyalty to the Bears, or "Them Yankees" as they would say. They were LOUD, but nontheless I had no problems with that as I made my fair share of noise. Now, onto the game itself.

   At the very beggining of the game, I thought we had the Saint's number as we seemed to be the more dominant team, especially after Jay Cutler led the team down the field and threw his lone TD to Dane Sanzenbacher. That felt incredible because I finally got to see my favorite QB throw a TD in person. After that 1st quarter, everything went downhill from there. We started off the second quarter with a small bang, Matt Forte gained a huge chunk of yardage on what I thought could have been a TD. But, we failed to progress any further and punted away. It was 3rd and very long for the Saints after an Idonije sack of Brees, and I thought we had them in the bag. Suddenly, he bombed it to #19 in where both safeties (Chris Conte and Major Wright) screwed up and it was an easy TD. From that moment on, I knew we were going to miss Hitman's presance for the rest of the day. Brandon Meriweather held his own for the most part, but Chris Conte looked anything but good from my eyes. Major Wright's coverage was suspect as well. And, to make matters worse, Drew Brees knew it. But the low blow was the fact we were without perhaps our two best WRs, as Roy Williams was out before KO and Earl Bennett took a mean shot where he wasn't seen from me again other than on KOR, THEN we saw perhaps our best O-Lineman in Gabe Carimi go down with what appeared was some sort of leg injury. Just what we needed, Jay was already having issues buying time to complete his passes, but now Omiyale was at RT. That O-Line just failed from that point on. No more lanes for Matt Forte or Kahlil Bell to run through. No more pass protection. No more points after the 1st drive of the 2nd half. Everything that could have went wrong, well you know, went wrong. Oh, and thats not even mentioning that before the end of the game, both starting safeties would be out of the game after Major Wright was taken out with what I think was a concussion. This was just one of those games where it seemed there wasn't much we could do to pull of a win. Jay Cutler did all he could with no protection at all. Brian Urlacher and that D did the best they could containing the Saints offense with such a short field. They just out played us, from the second quarter on out.

   I stayed for the whole game, and earned respect from the fans present. I didn't storm out all pissed and saying "There goes our season...". I took it like a man, walked out with pride intact, and smiled as it still was a great experiance from beggining to end. Besides, if you ask me, I think the Bears are very hungry after that loss, and we host the vulnerable Green Bay Packers next. So; Bear Down Chicago Bears, Bear Down.