Seattle Seahawks vs. Chicago Bears: Chicago Has Upper Hand Going Against Seattle

As the NFC Wild Card game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers ended, any Chicago Bears fan had to feel conflicted with the outcome.

On one hand, the Green Bay Packers, the archenemy, were still alive.

On the other hand, Philadelphia losing opened up the door for the Bears to prance into the NFC Championship Game.

The Bears currently have the easiest opponent of the next weekend. They have no Jets or Steelers or Ravens or Packers.

They have Seattle, the team that fell into the playoffs and happened to play an overrated New Orleans Saints team.

A Saints team that won TWO games against a legitimate opponent (Pittsburgh in Week 8, Atlanta in Week 16) and got beaten by Arizona and Cleveland.

As bad as Seattle was, they had a decent matchup against New Orleans this past weekend. The Saints lost its two top running backs, had a crappy defense without Malcolm Jenkins and were playing in wet Seattle in front of a roaring crowd.

Matt Hasselbeck had a great game that people were calling "fantastic" and "amazing," as if it were Charlie Whitehurst out there. Hasselbeck has always been a decent playoff quarterback and has been to an NFC Championship Game and a Super Bowl.

The good thing about Seattle playing New Orleans is that New Orleans had an awful defense.

The bad thing about this week is that Chicago has a dominant defense.

They have the top defense in the NFC (of all the teams left), and it's probably the third best left behind Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Does anybody expect Chicago to lose this game?

I know that Seattle beat them back in the beginning of the year, but let's be honest—every Chicago fan knows that the Bears were playing like absolute garbage back at the start of the season. The defense was fine, but the offense was terrible and all over the place. Jay Cutler was coming off a concussion, and Matt Forte was barely running the ball. 

That was then; this is now.

This is a Bears team that has knocked off Minnesota twice, Philadelphia and the New York Jets in a span of a few weeks.

Seattle can't hold a candle to any of those teams.

This is not a game against a flying offense and a wussy defense. The Bears offense is shaky (at best), but they can put up 25 against Seattle if they run the ball like a maniac.

The defense will do the rest.

Final Prediction: Chicago 31-10