Hopeful Chicago Bears vs. Favored Indianapolis Colts

Both the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts enter their respective 2008 campaigns with a clean slate after concluding their pre-season schedules last week. Tonight’s NFL betting affair will be the first time these clubs have squared off against one another, when it counts, since Peyton and the Colts picked up the franchises first ever Super Bowl Championship back in the 2006-07 season. Kick-off for this non-conference affair is scheduled for 8:15 ET on NBC.

The Bears struggled through its post Super Bowl season a year ago (7-9 SU & ATS), and went into their pre-season with a number of unknowns on both sides of the ball. Would LB Brian Urlacher’s off-season neck surgery affect his play on the field?

Can SS Mike Brown stay healthy and help the Bears defense contain the run after it was gouged a season ago? Who will lead the offense into battle with every passing week? Urlacher says he feels fine, as does Brown, for now, and head coach Lovie Smith elected to go with Purdue product Kyle Orton as his starting quarterback.

Orton is 12-6 as a starter in three seasons with the Bears. He completed 43-of-80 passes for 478 yards with a TD:INT ratio of 3:2 in three games last year. "I've been in the system a lot longer. I've been in the NFL a lot longer. And I'm a better pro," Orton said. That said;

Chicago’s starting offense wasn’t much to write home about in the exhibition season, and neither was its stop unit. NFL bettors paid dearly backing Chicago in the pre-season as it failed in its first three games as favorites before finally picking up a pointspread victory as a road underdog with an outright win at Cleveland last Thursday.

Indianapolis fans and NFL bettors watched as the Colts partook in its pre-season schedule without the services of good ‘ol #18 who decided to have knee surgery just weeks before camp opened. Many questioned the timing of the surgery, but the former MVP says he’ll be ready to partake in the first ever regular season game to be played in the brand new Lucas Oil Stadium.

A year after winning his first Super Bowl with the Colts, Manning ranked seventh in the NFL with 4,040 passing yards, throwing 31 touchdowns despite 14 interceptions - his most in five seasons. With head coach Tony Dungy’s club already proving its worth with a number of division titles over the years, his club took it easy throughout the pre-season.

They closed their exhibition season up with a 1-4 SU mark, but did go 2-3 versus the NFL pointspread with a nice outright victory over the Atlanta Falcons as three-point underdogs. Indianapolis finished 12-4 to win the AFC South a year ago, but was upset 28-24 by San Diego at home in the divisional playoffs.

The NFL betting trends for this match-up tells us that Chicago is 1-4 SU and ATS vs. the AFC South since 1992, but they’ve gone 14-12 ATS and won SU nine of the 17 times they were installed a 7.5 to 10-point road underdog. The Colts counter with an 8-1 SU and ATS mark in non-conference games the last three seasons, and they’re 20-8-1 ATS their L/29 September games.