Well, things happened pretty much like I expected them to.
Peyton Manning was pretty good (after a little bit of a struggle early on), the Bears forced some turnovers, and Rex Grossman couldn't do enough (or anything) to win the Bears the game. And so the end result was the Colts winning 29-17, proving that sometimes general consensus is right.
Anyway, how about that Colts running game? Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai combined for 190 rushing yards, and that's not even counting the 66 yards that Addai gained on short receptions. I thought Addai played great football, and he might have actually been my MVP. He just had a huge impact.
Speaking of impact, how awesome was the opening kickoff return by Devin Hester? He just made it look so easy... the little juke, and then gone. That really was a thing of beauty.
To get it out of the way, how about Rex Grossman? As expected (by me at least), that was decidedly not pretty. Lofting the ball up, fumbling snaps, throwing the game-clinching INT for a TD, an ugly throw to an open WR downfield... and on and on. I mean, 20/28 is a nice percentage, but that doesn't matter so much when your team finishes with 11 first downs. Yikes. Do the Bears look for another starter next year? We shall see.The Bears defense wasn't terrible, I didn't think. Certainly they've had better days, but the Colts offense is real good and the Bears offense could not stay on the field. What resulted was the Colts holding the ball for almost 39 minutes and a tired Bears defense having no shot in the 2nd half. They brought great energy early in the game, but you can't sustain that when you're on the field that long.
One note on the telecast... I thought the announcers and commercials were OK. Not great, but OK. But my real hope was that CBS would be able to go at least 5 or 6 minutes without a little bit of self-promotion, but unfortunately that did not happen. But we can't all get what we wish for.
All in all, a little bit of a snoozer, but it happens. Congrats to Tony Dungy and the Indianapolis Colts, the 2007 Super Bowl Champions!