Game 3: Chiefs 24, Bears 20

We're off with the first of the BFL, er, NFL Network's 54 preseason games, Chiefs vs. Bears from the interior of the Alpha Centaurii mother ship that landed on top of Soldier Field a couple of years ago. As a little kid, I used to think Dick Butkus lived there; today, I'm pretty sure aliens do.
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Chicago announcers are Dave Barnett and Erik Kramer. Where the hell is Ditka? I'm supposed to watch a Bears game without Ditka?
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Great directional kick by Robbie Gould to the Chief goal line helps prevent the kick from being returned to the 20. Brodie Croyle starts with a sideline pass well over Tony Gonzalez' head. He and Larry Johnson get confused over a handoff on third down, but Croyle wheels around the left corner himself for the first down. Smart, decisive move there by Croyle to save the play. He next hits Brad Cottam on a rollout to get to midfield. After two incompletions, Jamaal Charles turns a short middle pass into a first down, then Larry Johnson pops for 7. Nice sideline pass to Dwayne Bowe, in front of Charles Tillman, converts a 3rd-and-3 at the 24. Alex Brown stuffs LJ for -6, but it's wasted when Croyle hits ex-Mizzou WR Will Franklin at the 4 with a laser of a pass. Four converted third downs this drive by the Chiefs. A hold on Herb Taylor, who's having a pretty rough outing so far, moves the Chiefs back, but TE Mike Cox takes a short pass back inside the 5. The 16th play of the drive is a 3rd-and-goal draw to LJ with a fake inside handoff. Well-executed play, though a run on 3rd-and-5 seemed risky. The Chiefs held the ball almost 9 minutes in taking a 7-0 lead. They were 5-of-5 on third down.
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Danieal Manning brings the kickoff out to the 23. Kyle Orton starts at QB for Chicago. Huh, he healed nicely after Triple H broke his collarbone during that "last man standing" match. Oh, that was Randy Orton. Matt Forte, a draft pick I was skeptical about in April, starts off hot, with three touches for 13 yards. So far they're using him exclusively up the middle. On the other hand, Chris Williams, another draft pick I didn't like much, is now out indefinitely after surgery for a herniated disk, which will keep one John St. Clair on the Bears' starting offensive line for the foreseeable future. Orton hits Rashied Davis with a pretty sideline pass at the 50. Orton's 3rd-and-5 pass gets RKO'ed at the line, though, and the Bears have to punt. Brad Maynard gets run over by a Chief but no flag flies. Chiefs take over again after the touchback.
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Damion McIntosh starts out the Chiefs' second drive with a hold. Adewale Ogunleye then punks him with an inside move to sack Croyle at the 7-yard line. The Chiefs never recover and have to punt. Devin Hester's back to return it, but get this - the Chiefs punt the ball out of bounds. Who ever thought of that? Bears ball as the first quarter ends, Chiefs up 7-0.
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The Bears continue to work Forte hard. He bobbles a first-down pass away, though, and Orton's third down sideline pass isn't anywhere close, leading to a punt.
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Damon Huard now in as Chiefs QB. LJ still at tailback, though. The Bears are all over two handoffs to him and an attempted delay handoff to Charles, and the Chiefs punt right back. Nowhere near Hester, but the result's still great. The punt only gets to the 42, and a Chief facemask penalty tacks on 15 more, starting the Bears out in KC territory.
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Orton quickly hits Hester for 15. Forte goes up the middle to convert a third down at the Chief 15. From there, though, the drive moves backward. Greg Olson commits a hold and Derrick Johnson blows up a screen. The Bears get back down to the 15 but have to settle for a Gould FG after Orton fumbles on third down trying to scramble away from Turk McBride. 7-3, Kansas City.
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Charles returns the kickoff to the 27. 6:45 left in the half. Anthony Adams absolutely blows up a screen pass attempt by knocking center Wade Smith backwards and dumping Huard for a 15-yard loss. Chiefs get back to about the original line of scrimmage before punting. Dustin Colquitt bangs a 53-yarder to Hester, who dances in place for about a minute and gains nothing. And a penalty moves the Bears back to their 12.
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New backfield for the Bears with 4:30 left in the half: Rex Grossman at QB, Adrian Peterson the Lesser at RB. Peterson weaves his way through the middle for 14, then Grossman hits Brandon Lloyd at the sideline for 20 out to midfield. The Bears are there at the 2:00 warning. On 3rd-and-11, Grossman has to throw it away. That forces a punt the Bears nearly down at the 1, but they settle for the touchback instead.
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Chiefs start at the 25 after a penalty. After gaining one first down, Huard hits Maurice Price with a pretty sideline pass at the Bear 37. A couple of plays later, Kevin Payne bites bigtime on a Huard pump-fake, allowing Huard to hit Jeff Webb at the 8. After a timing pass between the two fails, Huard hits Price inside the 5 and he drives into the end zone with 0:11 left in the half to put the Chiefs ahead 14-3. =====================================================================
Manning gets out to the 33 with the kickoff. The Bears end the half with a handoff to Peterson.
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Though he and LJ got their signals crossed a couple of times, Croyle put together an epic drive to start the game and delivered time and time again on 3rd down. He has his rough edges but still looks much smoother than he did this time last year. And I'm starting to really like Charles as their change-of-pace RB to LJ. Maurice Price shone in the second quarter. Their tackles may be reason to worry, though, both Taylor and McIntosh struggled badly at times. Chiefs D made a couple of plays but is harder to get a feel for because their offense had the ball so much. The Bears D got to Chief QBs a couple of times but lacked that clutch play when they needed it, their secondary in particular. Hard to weigh in on their QB race so far. Orton was neither awful, nor anything special. Forte looked all right in his first opportunity against NFL starters. The offensive plan seemed devoted more to getting Forte a lot of work, at the expense of trying to establish anything with Hester, or anything downfield at all. Acceptable idea for preseason; dubious for the regular season.
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Bears start the second half just inside their 25. The dulcet tones of J.C. Pearson tell me we've switched to the Chiefs broadcast team. The Bears lose a yard in three plays and punt. Not a showcase for Grossman there exactly. Chiefs take over from their 37.
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Tyler Thigpen is your new Chiefs QB. The Chiefs announcers mention he's a Coastal Carolina Chanticleer, then neither of them can explain what a chanticleer is. (It's a rooster.) They try to run Kevin Battle on 3rd-and-4, which fails miserably, but they do down Colquitt's punt at the 4.
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Roger Twibell is KC's play-by-play man. Garrett Wolfe busts off the left side for a 40-plus yard run. Good block by fullback Lousaka Polite, plus a bad overrun by LB E.J. Kuale. The Chiefs stuff the next run, though, and Grossman trips over a lineman on second down and badly overthrows his receiver on third down. Hmm, the Era of Orton may not be far off at this rate. Grossman hasn't gotten a lot of chances tonight, but, no, he does not look good.
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Chiefs start from inside their 10. Stupidly trying to throw into a crowd, Thigpen throws a duck that's picked off by Rod Wilson. That's the first TO of this game; all three games so far have been pretty clean turnover-wise.
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Garrett Wolfe, another Bears draft pick I questioned when they made it, is one of those guys who's a big play waiting to happen, as he shows immediately after the turnover by scoring about a 25-yard TD on a short pass from Grossman, simply turning on the jets, getting the corner and turning up the sideline for the TD. Bears close to within 14-10.
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The wrestling theme continues as Dantrell "Macho Man" Savage returns the kickoff to about the 25. Thigpen nearly has his next pass picked off, deflected by Wilson. The third down pass is a wobbler a mile over Bobby Sippio's head on the sideline, and I don't see a thing right now to recommend Tyler Thigpen as an NFL QB.
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Bears take over at their 20 after a 66-yard blast by Colquitt. New Bears QB is Caleb Hanie. Viva preseason! Mike Hass makes a nice grab of a high throw for a first down. Wolfe rolls for about 10 behind another Polite block. Though all the routes are short, most of Hanie's throws are awful and nowhere close to his receiver. The quarterbacking this quarter's going to make me learn to appreciate Brock Berlin. The Bears convert a 4th-and-1 at the Chief 40 with a handoff up the middle to P.J. Pope. Now Hanie finds TE Kellen Davis on a deep corner pattern. The current Chief defense is neither stopping the run nor pressuring the QB. A confident Hanie drops back from about the Chief 13 and hits Brandon Rideau for a TD. The Chiefs probably should have intercepted that pass - Hanie had very little mustard on it - but instead, the Bears now lead, 17-14.
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Savage is upended at the 15 returning the kickoff. Thigpen throws on the roll - the Chiefs have called that for him a lot - and hits Mike Cox for 10 as the third quarter ends.
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Savage starts the 4th by bouncing against the grain for about 20 yards. Thigpen is locking in on his WRs so hard, he makes Tony Banks look deceptive, but he drills a low one to Kevin McMahan on the sideline for about 15 more, then converts a 3rd-and-12 with a pass to Sippio for about 20. Big play there, putting the Chiefs inside the Bear 25. They go for the end zone on 3rd-and-6 from the 19, though, and don't connect, settling for a 37-yard Connor Barth FG.
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Oh, for God's sake, it's the 4th quarter of a preseason game and we're tied. This is not supposed to happen.
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Rookie Earl Bennett gets steamrolled at the 23 on the return for the Bears. Will Poole commits illegal contact on third down to give the Bears life. Hanie rolls to his right and scrambles for a first down across midfield on 3rd-and-9. Pope surges for about 10 more over the left side. Polite rumbles for a similar gain inside the Chief 20. Bears are grinding the clock out well here; just 4:30 left to play. But on 3rd-and-8, the call is an inexplicable draw to Pope, shut down easily by KC. Gould puts the Bears up with a 36-yard FG. 20-17, Chicago.
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Gould's kickoff GOES OUT OF BOUNDS, so the Chiefs start from their own 40 with 3:19 left. Screen to Savage for about 10. Sippio fights through three Bears down to the Chicago 36 as the two-minute warning arrives. Chiefs have all three timeouts. The Bears JUMP OFFSIDE on 3rd and 2, putting the Chiefs at the 31. If the Chiefs are playing for the TIE here, I'm going to KC tomorrow to slap Herm myself. False start pushes them back to the 29 for a 3rd and 7, when Thigpen gets suddenly accurate and hits Sippio inside the 5, and he bangs his way in for a TD, beating Leonard Peters and the ridiculous amount of hair hanging out of his helmet. Chiefs 24, Bears 20.
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Good, now we shouldn't have to worry any about overtime. Bears held on the kickoff return and will start pinned back at their 18 with 1:03 left. Hanie hits Marcus Monk on the sideline for 13. 10 to Pope over the middle for 10. Bears call TO with 0:51 left. After Monk drops about a 25-yard pass, Hanie hits Pope over the middle for 10 more. Hanie spikes with 0:30 to go. Screen to Pope for about 15 more. Timeout with 0:21 left, with the Bears on the Chief 36. The Bears commit a costly illegal shift that sets them back to the 40 with 0:13 left. Bennett, who's barely been used in the passing game tonight, drops one with 0:07 left. Bears move back to the 45 for having 12 in the huddle. Hanie gets off a Hail Mary on the game's last play, but it looks like it was Jon McGraw who took Tom Jackson's advice and knocks it down. Chiefs 24, Bears 20.
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I need to make this part short because it is really, really, freakin' late. Croyle showed me some maturity tonight, and for the first time, really, looks like he can play starting QB for them. Sippio and Price provide them with nice WR depth. Thigpen, though, was all over the place. I'm unable to say that anyone stood out on D, though there were more than a few fine individual plays. For the Bears, Orton was at least average, while Grossman looked awful, though Grossman deserves a shot playing with the first string before judgment can really be passed. Wolfe was the eye-opening player to me. I'd have considered going to him as the starter instead of drafting Forte. But Forte does look like a promising player. Ron Wilson stood out defensively on a team already stacked with LBs. Two good defenses with big dropoffs in depth, two offenses that still have a ways to go, though KC's ahead of Chicago at this point.
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The Challenge really gets challenging tomorrow, with at least three games: Giants-Lions, Eggles-Steelers and Seahawks-Vikings. I'll be shooting to get two of those in tomorrow night.
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But for now, I'm going the heck to bed.