Chicago Bears vs Green Bay Packers: NFL Week 4 Pre-Party Open Thread

Happy Packers day, folks.

The Bears come into this week at 2-1, tied for the division lead with the Lions and with a chance to head to 3-1 with a win over the rival Packers. However, it's a wounded and angry Packers team, as they come in off a loss to that Lions team. They haven't run the ball well. Randall Cobb has struggled out of the slot so far.

The Bears haven't looked all that good either on their way to 2-1, but they've been a beat up team that's still gotten things done. The secondary's called in all hands and then some and still performed, spearheaded by Kyle Fuller, and the offense got one reception out of Brandon Marshall last week and still put together a win.

Is this the week the Packers get something together? Or can the Bears put away their rival and step up as a division contender? We're three hours from finding out.

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Your gameday WCG linkage, provided by the Lester A. Wiltfong, Jr, Department of Self-Promotion:

I normally put this at the end, but Spongie's been above and beyond in all capacities, and his Weekend Bears Den deserves all your clicks. I shouldn't even bother to link to anything else, ever, because Spongie has it all. Bears news, other team news, musical videos, what more could you want?

Kev did five questions with our SBN affiliate that covers the Packers, Acme Packing Company.

Les has your injury report for you. As well as last week's Sackwatch.

Steve Ronkowski has some things to tell you about Ahmad Dixon on special teams. This may also be the first time Playbook has been dedicated to specials.

Sam took this week to look at Jared Allen versus Julius Peppers.

I've got your PTMY, your six keys to victory, and how you can follow the game.

Gameday procedures today involve the kickoff thread going live at noon central time, 1 PM Eastern. (A noon kickoff, how novel.) We'll have subsequent quarter threads as the game goes on. After the game we'll have a quick recap for you with threads for the late football action, as well as Notes and Scribbles tomorrow morning.

With the propers out of the way, Bear Down, my friends.

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The WCG Sunday Livestream returns to help preview today's game, as Sam joins me for our usual two hour debacle of bad Madden and hopefully enjoyable sports talk. *Disclaimer: Any actual bad Madden is produced and/or aided by tracking five different tabs at once while trying to talk. Probably more aided, I'm bad naturally.

Here's how you can get a hold of us:

• Right here, on this very comment page. If you're wondering how to get here... Don't move. You're here. Promise.
• My Twitch page, over at http://twitch.tv/sjs_illini
• Over on our Twitters - Mine is @SJS_illini, Sam's at @SamHouseholder

As usual, we'll go live at about 9:30 AM CT, and we'll take you up to about 11:30 AM CT. We'll see you then.

Watch live video from SJS_illini on www.twitch.tv