2006 Football betting Review:  The Bears rolled to a second straight football betting NFC North crown, the top seed in the NFC and an eventual Super Bowl berth in 2006.  Questionable quarterback play by Rex Grossman and football betting season-ending injuries to Pro Bowl defensive stars Tommie Harris and Mike Brown hurt the Bears in the playoffs and they ended up losing to the Colts in the Super Bowl. 

	Chicago Bears 2006 Team Rank
	Chicago Bears 2006 Player Stats
	Chicago Bears 2006 Stats
	Chicago Bears 2006 Review
	Chicago Bears 2007 Preview

Devin Hester single-handedly won many games for the Bears in 2006. Hester broke a number of NFL records in the 2006 NFL betting season.  Football betting players didn’t get a whole lot out of the Bears even though they went 13-3.  The Bears were only 0-7 against the spread.  They were great though for football betting players that liked to bet overs as the Bears went 11-4-1 to the over in 2006 and that surprised many people considering the Bears were considered a defensive team.

CHICAGO BEARS 2006 SEASON REVIEW

Chicago Bears 2006 Stats

2006 was the football betting season that almost was for the Chicago Bears.  Twenty years after the legendary 1086 Bears strung together one of the most impressive campaigns in NFL history the 2006 team was trying to make its own mark on history.  But it was not to be.  Despite all the vainglorious talk of destiny and claims, most by its players that this team was meant for greater things it ultimately fell flat on its face after being humiliated by the Indy Colts.  However, this team did make it to the Super Bowl was a step up from the 2005 football betting season when in choked in the playoffs and was beaten by a mediocre Seattle club on in the playoffs.

The Bears got off to a sizzling start and was involved in the always premature talk about a perfect football betting season and all of that jazz.  The twenty year anniversary of the great ’86 club certainly was looming over this club at the beginning of the football betting season and the two teams, on paper, were similar, but not as close as the players and the media made them out to be.  The biggest similarity between the two squads for that football betting period was that they both relied on a strong defense and had pretty weak QBs, especially last year’s edition.

The Bears were one of the better defensive teams last football betting season, according to team stats.  The Bears ranked fifth in total yards allowed per game at 294.  The team ranked third in points allowed at only 15.9 points a game.  Against the run the ream was 6th best in the NFL betting league allowing only 99 yards a game and against the pass they were ranked 11th, allowing only 194 yards a game passing.   There were great football betting stats, but paper doesn’t always tell the whole story.  Not to take anything away from the team that made it all the way to the Super Bowl, but the Bears’ stats, the same as in 2005 were inflated.  Chicago played one of the easiest football betting schedules in the entire league last year and its stats grew fat on the likes of sacrificial lambs like the Lions, the Vikings and the 49ers among other teams.  It’s quite easy to shut down a team like the Lions, quite another to hold a team like Indy scoreless and the Bears learned this the hard way when they matched up with the Indy Juggernaut in the Super Bowl.

The Bear’s defensive studs again put up huge football betting numbers.  The team MVP and all pro Brian Urlacher had a142 tackles and several picks to set the pace.  Mark Anderson came out of nowhere to get 12 sacks and Ricky Manning Jr and Nathan Vasher both swiped 5 picks in the secondary.  The stat lines across the board were all very impressive although had to be taken within the context of the level of competition they were playing against.
However, the team did receive a huge boost from the second round pick in the 2006 draft, Deven Hestor.  This guy was unbelievable and set return records for TDs in his rookie football betting season.  He was fantastic and truly the best at what he did in the 2006 football betting.  One player however, who was not even close to best at what he did, actually was the worst, was QB Rex Grossman.  Most teams would have sent him to the practice squad from day one, but Lovie Smith stuck with Grossman through thick and thin.  In the end though, it didn’t really matter as even with a decent QB the team still would have been steam rolled by Indy.

Grossman’s football betting year end number weren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be, but they were pretty bad.  He did throw for over 3000 yards and had 23 TDs but he only completed 54 percent of his throws and had 20 TDs.  The thing that drove football betting critics crazy was his ability to throw picks in the most inopportune times.  The running attack of Bears showed some life in 2006 with Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson accounting for almost 1,900 yards, but the receivers were more or less anonymous.  This very flawed football betting team made it all the way to the Super Bowl, but they were far from the second best team in the league even with its 13-3 record.