If you follow the Dolphins and live in the UK, I agree, you've gotta go. I'm a bit spoiled, really, as I work for a US company and am in the States about a week a month so I get to see an unreasonable number of games and my own team (Chicago) at least two or three times a season live. As a result, I probably won't go to Wembley on the basis that it'd be like watching a football game not involving Palace (which I wouldn't do either.) Too bad it's going to be ten months Post-Tiki, though.

My friend on the island is a Giant's season ticket holder and he is going to go. Says it will give him an opportunity to see the Giants and visit London.

He's happy, anyway!

I have just reserved a couple of tickets.

Looking forward to later..... hoping The Colts do it at last.

Shame, shame. Go Bears. This is going to be a chess match, I suspect, unless Manning simply blows the game wide open early which is possible, but unlikely. But my guess is that both sides may go some way to cancelling each other out and things may end up very tight. I think it'll be a throwback Super Bowl -- real old school, grinding stuff -- which is no surprise given that both teams use a 25 year old defensive system and neither are likely to veer from what's got them this far in a couple of hours time as a result of which they will be, if nothing else, prepared for each other.

Some keys:

Grossman is not nearly as bad as some people would like to believe. But he has to play to his potential.

The Bears will effectively play a 47 defense (they'll rush the front four and the rest will drop back into out and out coverage.) The key will be Ogunleye, Anderson, Tank, etc....they have to generate a pass rush to give the DBs a chance.

Manning will complete passes and make yards whether the Colts win or not. They have to hold on to the ball.

I won't make a prediction, but the main players will be Vasher and Tillman (the corners) for Chicago, and Addai for the Colts.

I hope the Bears blitz, Manning will pick off passes all night long then.

At the end of the day AFC is far better than the NFC, The bears have struggled v AFC opponents this season and will again. Christ, even The Dolphins beat them! :D

The Bears will not Blitz. You can take out a mortgage on that. The Steel Curtain defense (which is what Tampa 2 effectively is) was specifically designed to put the backers into coverage, play the safeties very, very deep and use the corners to rough up the wideouts early, then play man. The Bears personnel is very suited to that, as it happens, which is why they turned around and improved so quickly under Lovie (the players needed for the system were already there when he arrived.) It amuses me, all this talk of comparing the 85 Bear defense with this one because they are polar opposites. The only thing they have in common is that they are both very good. The 46 was a blitzing defense. The 47 is a coverage system. You couldn't find a backer more different than Singletary (or Butkus) than Urlacher if you tried. Ditto, you couldn't find a 55 more different from Otis Wilson than Briggs. This is one reason why some (ignorant) people think Urlacher is over-rated, because they think to be a great backer, you have to be a spectacular, blitzing backer. That, of course, is rubbish. It isn't what Urlacher does. There probably isn't another backer in the game who could play aggressive coverage to that standard.

Sorry, but you should get your facts straight. The Bears have hardly struggled against AFC teams this season. They thrashed the Bills, beat the playoff-bound Jets in the Meadowlands, and lost at Foxboro to New England by the narrowest of margins -- 4 points. Fine, they were drubbed once, by Miami. It happens. Furthermore, they beat both the Chargers and the Browns in pre-season exhibition games for whatever that is worth. So, a 2-2 record or 4-2 if you include all games, and half of those games were against sides who ended up in the playoffs.

My facts are straight :rolleyes:

They have struggled far more against AFC teams than NFC teams, its obvious, jesus. They beat the mighty Browns and Bills! dont make me laugh, please :D and They didnt perform well against the Jets.

My facts were straight :)

You didn't say they had struggled MORE against AFC opponents than NFC. You merely said they had struggled. So I'm afraid you've undermined your own point. Besides -- with the exception of the Dolphins game -- they haven't struggled (unless you think competitive games or anything except an easy win means you're struggling. Sure, the games vs. the AFC were hard, but what did you expect?) And as for the Jets game, when you beat a playoff bound team on the road and hold its offense to next to nothing, well, most teams would love to struggle like that on a weekly basis.

Wow, good job at being picky.

Well for what its worth I think they will struggle again, or I hope they do :)

Im off to settle down in front of the TV.

What time is kick off? I thought it was 11?

11.25

Awesome start for Bears! :D

Touchdown Bears, quickest touchdown ever?

:p

Thats funny, im sure ive heard the commentators call the Bears Blitzing during that 1st Q :)

Odd, just what I was thinking of when the Bears won the toss. Think the quickest prior to that was about 2 mins (SB XXII).

Good start for Vinatieri. Called wrong on the coin toss, kick-off gets returned for six, then can't even attempt a point-after.

Way too many Manning's on the field.

PFiA's been putting himself around too much in the last 30 years!

If memory serves me right didn't Denver get a very quick TD against the Redskins - I'm sure it was their first drive. Redskins won comfortably in the end :o