At the moment, the leaders in the NFC wild card race are the Lions and the Bears. But when those two teams met at Soldier Field on Sunday, they didn’t look like a pair of wild card teams.
The Bears looked more like a Super Bowl team. And the Lions looked more like the same old Lions.
In one of those games where everything went right for one team and everything went wrong for the other, the Bears destroyed the Lions 37-13. The Bears were better on offense, defense and special teams as they jumped out to a 20-0 lead early, and by the time they extended that lead to 34-6 within the first few minutes of the third quarter, it was clear that this was going to be a blowout.
In the second half, the only people still watching this game may have been the fine police in the league office. Among the infractions likely to draw fines from this game are:
-- Earl Bennett for wearing orange shoes, which got him fined $5,000 last week.
-- Ndamukong Suh for ripping Jay Cutler’s helmet off.
-- Nick Fairley for planting Cutler into the turf after Cutler had thrown a pass.
-- Julius Peppers for clothesline tackle of Calvin Johnson.
-- Lance Briggs for a hit on Johnson that drew a personal foul penalty.
-- D.J. Moore for drilling Matthew Stafford after a play, a penalty that got him ejected.
-- Stafford for throwing Moore to the ground during that play, which is what set Moore off.
-- A whole bunch of players for a fight that broke out after the Moore-Stafford confrontation.
Bottom line, this was a nasty, chippy game, and one in which the Lions’ tough reputation took a hit. Because the Bears kicked their butts.