WCG Sunday Livestream: NFL Week 18 - Bears Vs Vikings

Good morning. It’s the final week of the regular season.

The final week is always a bit weird, especially as teams figure out if they’re in or out of the playoffs, play towards draft picks, all those fun things. This week, the Chicago Bears elect to start Nathan Peterman against the #2-seed hopeful Minnesota Vikings.

The last time these two teams faced off, the Bears were on their final drive with a chance to get into scoring range before former Viking cast-off Ihmir Smith-Marsette gave the ball to his former team.

The Bears have won one game since then, and now the only thing separating them from the #1 pick in the draft is the Houston Texans taking on the Indianapolis Colts. A Houston win with a Bears loss gives the Bears the #1 pick in the draft. A Houston loss or a Bears win gives Houston the #1, and depending on the Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos, can give the Bears as low as the #4 pick.

On the other side of things, a Vikings win paired with the Cardinals beating the 49ers gives them the #2 seed. The 49ers beating the Cardinals gives them the #2 seed. The Bears beating the Vikings also turns the #2 seed over to the 49ers.

So while the Navy and Orange can’t make Paul Allen recreate one of his more famous calls, they can try to set them up for facing a 6-seed versus a 7-seed at the cost of up to 2 draft spots...

Football season’s more fun when we get to look at playoff scenarios versus draft pick scenarios, but so it goes. Hopefully, next year. Bear Down, my friends.

Today’s WCGSL marks the conclusion of the 10th season that we’ve been doing this silly little pregame show. We’ve seen the Trestman regime, the Emery era, the entirety of the Pace era, John Fox and Matt Nagy, Jay Cutler to Mitch Trubisky and now Justin Fields. We’ve seen two playoff berths and no playoff wins. Hopefully, something about that changes over the next ten.

We’ve got a lot to discuss today. We’ll talk about the direction of the team, including Justin Fields. We’ll talk about Chase Claypool and why his arrival has been more bust than boom. I guess we’ll talk about Bears/Vikings as well.

As usual, here are the ways to get a hold of us:

• Here in these comments. Look down. Right about where you’d find the Bears in the standings this year.
• Over on the Twitch channel.
• Over on our Twitters: @SJS_illini, @SamHouseholder, @WCGridiron.
• And over on Hive: @sjsillini.

We’ll see you for one final time this year at 9:30 AM CT. See you then.