Minnesota Vikings at Chicago Bears: WHO YA GOT!?

Man, one more thing that I managed to put off until the very end this week. Again, my apologies. . .next week we'll be on a slightly more standard schedule as far as getting things published.

In any case, here's this week's prediction widget, courtesy of our friends at The Crowd's Line.

This week's game has the same basic storyline as last week's game. . .the Minnesota Vikings go on the road where they've generally struggled (particularly against the division) to take on a team that they, on paper, should beat. The Chicago Bears are 2-4 and lost their last game in overtime to a Lions' team that the Vikings have already defeated twice.

Last week in Detroit, the Vikings got themselves into a hole early, going down 14-3 after allowing Detroit to find the end zone on their first two drives. But, contrary to what we've seen from Vikings' teams in the not-so-distant past, Minnesota made the adjustments they needed to make and dominated the final three quarters of play on their way to a 28-19 victory at Ford Field.

This is going to be a must-win game for the Bears. With a loss, they would fall to 2-5 overall and 0-3 in the division, which would pretty much bring the competitive portion of their season to an end. They're likely going to come out fired up for this one in front of the home crowd.

In order to pull this one off, the Vikings are going to have to show the same resilience that they showed in Detroit last week. This looks like a completely different team under Mike Zimmer, and it just feels like this is the week that the Vikings get a victory in a place that they haven't won at since Adrian Peterson was a rookie.

As far as a score. . .I'll call it Vikings 24, Bears 17.

What have you got, folks?