The Guards and Center were getting mauled all night. Peyton was in panic mode more or less the whole time.

The receivers looked sharp for the most part but a couple of dropped balls at key points and a few turnovers sealed the deal for us. The defense played well considering how long they were on the field.

Essentially, our offense is only going to play as well as our Offensive line lets it. Howard Mudd needs to whip these guys into shape.

The Vikings next week and the Jags after that? I can see us going 0-3 before the bye. I thought the rookies and the moves on the front line would be ok, but clearly they are not. Clearly, the loss of Saturday affected the front line. And clearly Manning is not nearly back to anything close to the Manning of old. And Marvin? He needs to go through the basics of holding onto the football. And the D? Where was the intensity? It seemed like the Colts walked in thinking that the Bears were going to roll over and and accept defeat. If the Colts don’t get mad and get a little fire underneath them, I think we could be 0-3 by the bye week, and looking at not even making the playoffs.

Our defense was horrible. A rookie running back racked up 140 yards on us, including a huge momentum shifting run for a touchdown. Sanders took a horrible angle to catch him, but it didn’t matter. The way they were pounding us, they would have scored anyway.

Crap!!!

I think teams are countering our Cover 2 by muscling the crap out of us; if Bob Sanders is tied up with a blocker and can’t shore up the middle, our middle is like the autobahn.

I don’t want to get too cliche but this game was a matter of a few plays not quite being made by the Colts. Whether it’s the foulups inside the red zone on their first drive of the game or a couple of long passes not connecting. The Colts thrive with a lead as others have pointed out and they just couldn’t get that tonight. Also, the Bears looked damn good. Could have been the Colts looking bad as well but I will be very curious to see how the Bears do the rest of the season. Sometimes it’s too easy to forget that this is a team that made it to the Super Bowl 2 years ago (and lost, haha) and has most of that same defense intact. They were awful last year because of injuries but now that it’s back they could really surprise a lot of people.

I’m not at all worried, but then I said that at the beginning of the 3rd quarter tonight too. I think we’ll all see the Colts rebound from this one and put together another great season.

Three things happened that led to us losing the game.
1) Momentum was huge and we never got it, I thought at the beginning of the game the drop by A. Gonzalez was huge cost us big time. We make that and get a FG or a Touchdown and the crowd is on our side then the D with a big 3 n out, then the FG. Completely different game
2) The long run by Forte really killed
3) Fumble by Harrison leading to the TD for the Bears

Those 3 things accounted for 14 points for the bears, and 3-7 points for the Colts by my account we take away 14 points for the bears they now have 15 points, you give the colts 3 points and we have 16. There in a nutshell is why we lost this game 3 plays that is it 3 plays.

I thought the middle of the line did a very good job given the circumstances. When you have Urlacher and either Hillenmayer or Briggs in the gaps all night showing blitz, there is a tendancy for Manning and the line to adjust (incorrectly). The Bears game planned this perfectly, in the first half the LB would come and stay up on the line in the second half they would drop back into coverage or regular positions. This kept manning off balance and I think led to the Harrison fumble with the LBs dropping he was running right into them so rather than protecting the ball from the corner he protected it from the LBs. That allowed the CB to make the play on the ball.