Chicago Bears vs San Francisco 49ers: NFL Week 13 Pre-Party Livestream and Open Thread

Good morning. It’s week 13, and this week features an exciting matchup between two teams that, well, it hasn’t really been pretty. The Bears, well, we know the story of the Bears - but ust in case, beat by the Saints before the bye, beat by Brett Hundley after the bye, Connor Barth sent a potential game-tying field goal into the moon instead of through the uprights against the Lions, and last week was, well, last week.

The Niners’ year has also not been pretty. Prior to their first win against the Giants in Week 10, the lost three games by a combined score of 93-30, and coming off the bye lost to the Seahawks to come into today’s game at 1-10.

But this game can also be dubbed the Hope Bowl (or “Draft Position Bowl”). The Niners traded a second-round pick for Jimmy Garoppolo at the trade deadline and today he makes his first start before he either gets franchise tagged, hits free agency, or signs a long-term deal with 9 total starts under his belt.

The Bears, meanwhile, have been riding with Mitchell Trubisky since week 5 against the Vikings and, while he’s had his growing pains, has shown some of the playmaking and flashes that enticed the Bears to make sure he was their guy at #2 overall.

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A quick refresher of the gameday procedures, of course, because since the game starts at noon central, the first quarter thread will pop at noon with each subsequent thread popping up as the game goes on. After the game, Patti will have immediate postgame reaction, and tomorrow we’ll start up with our analysis and breakdowns of the game.

So with all the propers out of the way... Bear Down.

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The WCG Sunday Livestream returns today, and we have a lot to discuss. A pretty interesting phenomenon has presented itself during our staff email chains that I’d like to discuss, and there have been a couple scalding hot takes regarding the trade up for Trubisky that I thought were settled already.

All that and more will be discussed with Sam later this morning along with you, the people. If you want to contribute, there are several ways you can do that.

• Here, in these comments. You know, right here. This post. Look down.
• Over on the Twitch site, where the stream is hosted. You can follow this link here to go participate in the Twitch chat and follow the stream. Yes, I read both.
• Over on our Twitters. I’m at @SJS_illini. Sam’s at @SamHouseholder. And the WCG main twitter is @WCGridiron.

We’ll be live at 9:30. See y’all then...