Tony Capriolo
Senior Sports Producer

Okay, now that I've taken my villain's cape off...

First, I am NOT a Colts fan. Nor am I talking about THIS year's Colts. I was simply making the point that many a team has looked unbeatable at this point in the season only to make a quick, quiet exit from the postseason...

That said, this edition of the Bears is, yes, right now, the best team in the NFL. Rex Grossman is everything the Bears always hoped for and more. Bernard Berrian is playing like the game's premier deep threat. The tight ends are finally being utilized (quick aside: I've never understood the venom directed at Desmond Clark in this city. It's not HIS fault they never threw him the football. Now that they're making a concerted effort to do he's proving he's the pass-catching tight end they thought they were getting when they signed him.) and the running game hasn't even really gotten untracked yet.

And the defense... well, the defense is good. The easiest way to have a strong defense is to get pressure with your front four. When you get into the offensive backfield consistently without blitzing, it can cover up a lot of ails. Of course, the Bears don't HAVE many ails to cover up. Their linebacking corp is fast and decisive and their secondary knows how to make plays when the front-four-pressure forces mistakes.

So when you combine the team and the NFL landscape, it's certainly easy to be optimistic. You hear people say all the time that teams in today's NFL simply don't go 16-0... it just doesn't happen. But you're hard-pressed to find a game left on the Bears schedule in which they won't be the favorite. Perhaps that late-November tilt in New England... but that's about it.

I haven't looked at Vegas lines recently but my guess is the Bears right now are the odd-on favorite to go to Miami to represent the NFC... and they SHOULD be. Let's hope they pay off those betting in that direction.