papz

After watching what Chicago was able to do to Atlanta, how much of a challenge do you think the Bears will be this weekend?

“This is a team that’s easy to forget that played in the NFC Championship game a year ago in Chicago. The last two-thirds of the season they played really good football, complementary football both offensively and defensively and in the kicking game. The film against Atlanta was definitely a good indication of the type of team we’re playing. You saw them really do a good job on defense, creating the turnovers, pressuring the quarterback, and that’s a really good offense they played. Offensively they capitalized on that field position and came up with some big plays themselves. When you watch it not only on offense and defense but you watch it in the kicking game, Lovie (Smith) and his staff have a formula and it’s been very good to them when you look at their history. They played to it on Sunday and you can see that in their tape.”

Can you talk about their defensive line being so productive?

“There’s a point in that game when it became one-dimensional. Once that happened, all of a sudden the pressure heats up and it becomes easier for the defensive line to rush the passer. They play with great effort and energy. (Julius) Peppers has done a great job. The rest of those guys up front are very active. It’s a really good front defensively. It’s an experienced defense when you look at the returners coming back off of last year’s team. They know and are very well-coached in their scheme and they know what they’re looking to do with each defensive alignment that they call. They do a great job of keeping the ball in front of them. Historically, since Lovie’s been their head coach, they’re probably second or third highest in the league with takeaways by that defense. It’s something they obviously do a grat ob of emphasizing and it shows up on film.”

You haven’t had much success in Chicago. Are you glad you get to play them at home?

“A lot of those games after a while they begin to run together. There are three of them. Maybe not so much the NFC Championship game, but the other two, when you play a good team and you play them either on the road or at home there are still some key elements to what wins and loses and we have to do a better job of protecting the football when we play them this time than we have in years past. It seems like such a long time ago, and yet some of the things we just talked about happened in the Atlanta game on Sunday happened to us when we were there. We know it’s a big challenge for us, and the focus is for us to put together three good days of practice this week and get as much tape-work as we can on our ourselves and our opponent and understand the strengths of this opponent.”

Full presser below.
Payton's Wednesday Presser

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

All little common sense goes a long way.