Chicago Bears vs San Francisco 49ers: NFL Week 2 Pre-Party Open Thread

Remember when we spent all preseason missing the earlier kickoffs such as noon games (Hello there, Seattle in preseason week 3)?

Not this week, as we have to wait until tonight to see the Bears try to right the ship against the 49ers - certainly not an easy task.

The Bears have a lot working against them this week - travelling to the west coast, opening a new stadium for the 49ers (that has had more turf problems than Soldier Field this year), and oh yeah, the 49ers are a pretty damn good team. They run - a lot, something that hasn't exactly treated the Bears well in recent memory. They get good pass rush up front and play solid defense, period.

And the Bears would be able to attack a "vulnerable" secondary quite a bit better if three of their top four receivers weren't coming in either questionable or doubtful, as well as two of their starting offensive linemen. However, the 49ers are a bit vulnerable against the run, and Matt Forte can do some things both on the ground and in the air. Martellus Bennett is still pretty good too, and Santonio Holmes may have to take a bigger role this week than I'm sure he imagined he would heading into week two.

It's gameday. WCG links ahead.

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Let's lead off with a lot of WCG and Niners Nation interplay. Niners Nation led with which Bears and 49ers players could be considered under the radar. Then on Thursday, Kev and David told you why each team could lose. And on Friday, David answered some questions for Kev about the matchup, and Kev did the same over at Niners Nation.

Closer to home, the Bears promoted two receivers and an offensive lineman from their practice squad, after cutting David Fales, Tony Fiametta, and Kelvin Hayden to make room.

Sam believes the Bears need Matt Forte to come alive for the Bears to have a chance.

Ronkowski asked if the Bears' offense is too predictable.

Lester has your first edition of the Sackwatch on the year.

I've got your PTMY for the week, your six-pack of keys, and how you can follow the game action tonight.

For everything else, including game previews, news about the promotions and varied degrees of arghlblargle from renowned columnists, check out the always excellent and always updated Weekend Bears Den, because Spongie deserve massive peppermints for curating that stuff so you might not have to.

Today's gameday procedures - we'll have an early-game open thread and a late-game open thread, because we have to make it to the night game tonight, so you can gather there to watch today's early games. The first-quarter thread will pop when the game starts with each subsequent thread showing as the game progresses. When the game ends, we'll have a quick recap followed by Notes in the morning.

Now with the propers out of the way, Bear Down.

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Sam Householder joins me again for the WCG Sunday Livestream, as we'll talk about a busy Bears week, breaking down what went wrong last week against Buffalo and discussing what will (or needs to) happen tonight against San Francisco. Leave your comments and questions for us on one of three avenues:

• Right here, in this very comment thread (That sounds easy! Wonder how you'd get there though...)
• Over on my Twitch channel at (http://twitch.tv/sjs_illini)
• Over on our Twitters (@SamHouseholder, @SJS_illini)

We'll go live at 10:30 AM ET/9:30 AM CT - or, half an hour from now, so get your questions and comments in! See you then.

Watch live video from SJS_illini on www.twitch.tv