A couple of playoff teams from last year that expected a lot more out of this year will try to find some traction on Sunday Night Football as the Los Angeles Rams host the Chicago Bears. The Bears are 4-5-0 and are mired in third place in the NFC North. The Rams are 5-4-0 and mired in third place in the NFC West. The Bears are 3-6 ATS while the Rams have managed to scrap out a 6-3 ATS mark despite their record.
The Bears had lost four straight games SU/ATS but put up a solid performance last weekend at home against the Detroit Lions. Chicago won 20-13 covering as -6.5 favorites. The much maligned Mitchell Trubisky had his best game of the year throwing three touchdown passes against a Lions team that played without starting quarterback Matthew Stafford. That’s actually working in our favor since the conventional wisdom among the ‘public’ is that the only reason the Bears won/covered was the Lions’ quarterback injury.
The Rams had won two straight games against bottom feeders Atlanta and Cincinnati but ran into a determined effort from the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh completely shut down the Rams offense winning 17-12 as +4 point home favorites. The Rams are another team that the ‘public’ has pegged incorrectly. The thinking is that they’re underachieving or that last year’s performance was a fluke. That’s not really the case. The Rams offensive line is riddled with injuries and Todd Gurley isn’t the same running back this year that he was last year. As a result, Jared Goff is expected to do things that he’s not really capable of. McVay has had to ‘dumb down’ the playbook a bit simply because Goff isn’t getting the protection he needs. This past weekend, they lost center Brian Allen for the year
Our first instinct is to bet on the quarterback with the best QB rating in this matchup. You’ll be shocked to learn that puts us on Mitchell Trubisky who has a better rating than Jared Goff. For some reason Trubisky is considered a grease fire but Goff isn’t. At the same time, Bears’ running back David Montgomery has put up better rushing numbers than Gurley. The Rams’ defense has played fairly well this year but they can’t do it all. Los Angeles’ biggest success this year has been against porous defenses like Atlanta but they’re running into a defensive buzzsaw here. The Bears have the #4 scoring defense in the NFL allowing 17.2 PPG and they’ll feast on a battered Rams offensive line.
