Mark And Kev's Most Excellent Adventure

Game 1 Eagles@ Bears

Day starts at 06:00 GMT (00:00 Central Time)

Easy trip to Heathrow Airport, arrived 09:30 and check in without any problem. Boarded the plane at about 11:00 for 11:35 take off, but a delay caused by baggage problems means we don’t take off until 12:35. Still no worries because we are due to land at 15:30 local time and the game doesn’t start until 20:20 right!

We fly world travellers class (first time for me) and can’t get over how much leg room we have and how big the seats are. Took advantage of the free drinks to have 6 beers and a half bottle of red wine with the meal (very tasty beef stew). I could get used to this lifestyle. Spent most of the flight plaing cribbage (Old English card game). Took a breather about halfway through the flight and had a choice of movies to watch. I decided on The Thomas Crown Affair because I hadn’t watched it in a long time. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Due to the lack of head winds the flight made up some of the lost time and we arrived at O’Hare about 14:55. It’s my first time to the States and I am not sure what to expect as my only point of reference are the movies. It was a lot faster than I expected to get through customs and baggage reclaim. A very helpful employee helped us buy our CTA tickets and we get on my first experience of American public transport. It compares very favourably to the UK. It isclean, fast and efficient. Made a mistake when changing lines (headed in the wrong direction for 1 stop) but we soon realised our mistake and rectified the situation. Got off at Rooseveldt and walked up South Michigan Avenue to our hotel (Best Western) about 16:30.

Wasn’t sure what to expect, but we have a double room each on the top floor. Mine looks South and West and to be fair not much of a view apart from the distant museum across the park. The room is a nice size and clean. The only difference to European hotels is that it has a fan heater rather than central heating. But apart from this it is the same as hotels all over the world. Grabbed  shower and then put on my cold weather clothes (thanks for the warnings guys)and ~I decided to wear my #24 Broncos shirt.

 we headed out into Chicago to try and find some food and beer. Walked north up South Michigan and passed a number of hotel bars and an Irish sounding place. Decided on a meal in a hotel reasturant a few blocks up. Ordered wings for a starter and a burger for the main. Grabbed a couple of Sam Adams to drink with meal. The wings were spicy, and I thought the taste was similar to the way West Indians do their pepper sauce in flavour. Very enjoyable. The burger was huge (16 ounces) and came with a side of fries and onion rings. I could feel my cholestrol level rise jsut looking at it. The burger wouldn’t fit in my mouth and I had to resort to using my knife an fork to eat it. The quality of the food was excellent, but the portion size was too much. Luckily the waiter had asked about the game because he thought the kick off was at 18:20. We thought it was 20:20 because all of our experience of watching NFL on TV took place at this time. We didn’t realise that Chicago was another time zone across and the game was actually due to start at 19:20. So big up to the waiter and bad up to our planning and research before flying over. It also brought into question the Broncos game on Thursday because we are flying into Denver on the day of the game and we didn’t factor in another change in time zone. We thought the flight from Chicago to Denver looked a bit short!

After the meal we headed towards Soldier Field and stopped off for a beer at our hotel bar because it was on the way. 2 pints of Sam Adams for $11. Not sure if this is the normal price or a bit more because it ws a hotel bar. Still no micro-brewery beer! The Sam Adams was very tasty and we finally got talking to a real Chicagoan. I was wearing my Bronco’s shirt and he asked if I had seen the Chargers game. I hadn’t and he told me the score (very disappointed as I really thought we could win it. But I won’t make judgements because I hadn’t seen the game and the final score does not tell the whole story). Spent 30 minutes chatting to Dimitri and his grilfriend. He was imnpressed with my knowledge of the NFL (thank you MHR) and I told him about you all.

Set off for the game and took a back pack with my gloves, hat and scarf in it. It was a 15 miues walk and unseasonably mild. The stadium looked very impressive in the dark (will go back in the day light to get my touristy photos), but you have the same problems with everyone wanting to get in at the same time and we experienced a long delay in getting to the front. We were then kindly informed that I could not take the bag in "for my own security", so had to take my stuff out and dump the bag. I wasn’t impressed about this and was not expecting this policy to be in place. Again I should have done some more research.

Finally in the ground and we made our way to our seats. Bloody hell! We were in the massive stand along the sideline (think it was the west stand) and we were 3 rows down from the back of the stand. It was a very long and exhausting walk up the stairs to our seats. The view was incredible (we were on the 15 yds line), but the seats were banked very steeply and it was a good job we didn’t suffer from vertigo.

Observations of the Crowd

There were a lot more Eagles fans than I thought I would see and the banter between them and the Bears fans was entertaining.

The crowd seemed to be quite subdued. I didn’t get too many observations about my Bronco’s short, apart from the people sitting immediately behind me, who came from Denver. What a coincidence? We explained ot them about our journey and asked for some recommendations about bars in Denver. They said "Kazoo" (or something like that) and the "Cruise Bar". Not sure if they were pulling our chain. They did spend the whole game booing Cutler and making very entertaining remarks about the game. The girl sang along to the Chicago song, but in a very funny sarcastic manner, and she also came out with the funnist line after the Bears took their 3rd field goal:

"We’re gonna kill you with our field goals, yeah"

It was a lot funnier because of the manner in which she said it and you probably had to be there to get the full benefit. The crowd did get up for 3rd downs, but were very subdued until the Bears TD. Then they became really raucous and fun to listen to. Is thois normal in NFL games? Or it it because they are having a bad season? They were very fickle about Jay and he got booed and cheered in equal measure.

The funniest moment was when the Bears had 3rd and goal near the end of the 2nd quarter, when Jay ran passed the line of scrimage and threw to Olsen in double coverage when he could have just ran it in. The guy in front of us got so excited that he lost his balance and went tumbling over spilling his beer everywhere. He finally nmanaged to halt his fall after taking out the people for 3 rows in front. Luckily he was unhurt, but he didn’t come back after half time. The rest of his family did though!

I was surprised by how many fans left the game after the final Eaqgles touchdown. There was still nearly 6 minutes on the clock and they had no faith in their offense being able to take the ball down the field for a TD. I suppose that is the voice of experience speaking for them and also a chance to get out before all the crowds block up the CTA and traffic. Similar things happen at soccer matches in the UK.

Observations of the game

The Bears O Line is really bad! They didn’t get much push on running plays and did a very good impersonation of a sieve on passing plays. I know Ted and others will have a better view on this and that sometimes TV gives a better view. But watching the game live they were terrbile and failed to pick up the blitz on most plays. Cutler was under pressure on the majority of passing plays, even when they kept both TE and the RB back to block. I was shocked when the MLB came through untouched and Cutler ended up eating the dirt. They also gave up a lot of penalties and seemed to always start drives as 1st and 20. This will kill any team.

The WR and TE struggled to get open on nearly every play. They didn’t get any separation and seemed to run very poor routes. I think on a few of the incomplete passes they gave up on the play and failed to complete their routes. I remember Johnny Knox doing this particularly in the third. Also they seemed to drop a number of catchable balls and always seemed to make catches running back to the line of scrimmage.

Cutler seemed to have been mentally scarred by the 5 interceptions on the 49ers game and was throwing scared. He overthrew a number of receivers when they finally got open. The obvious one was Olsen on a TD attempt at the end of the 2nd half. He still appears to lock into one player on each play and throw it to them without going through his progressions, but in all fairness there was very rarely anyone obviously open for him to identify.

Forte just doesn’t seem to hit the hole at all. Some of this appears to be that the OL aren’t creating a hole, but the rookie Bell looked very good. If he can findthe hole, then surely Forte should be able to as well. The rookie should have scored a TD on his breakaway in the 2nd half, but he didn’t trust his blocker (I think it was Knox) and checked inside before cutting back to the side line. This gave the safety a chance to get across and make a fine tackle.

The Bears D played well apart from the long DeSean Jackson TD, but to be fair he seems to get that kind of separation against every team he goes long against. He was easily the best player on the field, even if he did fumble twice. Briggs palyed very well and it was the first time I believede the hype about him. They wore down in the 2nd half and I was suprised to see that they were not on the field for an excessive amount of time. My perception was that the Bears offense didn’t spend a long time on their drives and that the Eagles had won the time of possesion battle by a considerable amount.

By the time the game finished we were very cold and tired. We had been up for 23 hours and just didn’t fancy a post game beer.

I hope its not too long winded, and that you get a sense of the excitement I had in coming to America and seeing a livegame. Next stop Denver for Thanksgiving. If someone can kindly provide a guide to upload photo's I will try to post some of those.

Thanks for reading