Preseason Week 2 Pre-Gamin’: Bears at Cardinals – Lineups, Broadcast Info, Game Thread

Saturday nights are alright for football if you ask me.

The Chicago Bears hope to follow up the most exciting preseason game in the franchise’s history with a worthy encore. Preseason won-loss records don’t do much for anyone, but it would be nice to see the first-team unit piece together some long scoring drives to start the game. As for finishing strong, I’d imagine some of the defenders on the bottom half of the roster are itching to get back onto the field and improve on their late-game performances.

University of Phoenix Stadium is the venue for tonight’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, a team just one year removed from being a participant in the NFC Championship game. The Cardinals stumbled to a 7-8-1 record last season, but made the playoffs in each of the previous two seasons. Bruce Arians is the head coach in Arizona, and he can thank the previous front office which passed on Arians to choose Marc Trestman. If you’ll recall, Arians took over as the Indianapolis Colts head coach while Chuck Pagano fought leukemia. Arians went 9-3 en route to winning AP NFL Coach of the Year in 2012.

Whoops.

Arians has moved on to bigger and better things, while the Bears pulled the plug on the Trestman era after two years and are now in the third year of the John Fox regime. Hopefully, there will be a day we won’t regret the Bears making that error in judgment.

You can throw out the record books for preseason games. But if we didn’t want to do so, we would note the Bears’ 58-28-6 record against the Cardinals. Arizona won the last meeting in 2015, but Chicago has won four of the last six.

Game Info

Arizona Cardinals (2016: 7-8-1, 2nd NFC West) at Chicago Bears (2016: 3-13, 4th NFC North) – 9 pm CT on FOX, WBBM-AM 780, FM 105.9

Odds: Cardinals (-2), Over/Under 40.5 via Covers.com

Game Thread

Your game thread is down in the comments, so let’s have some good, clean (safe-for-work) fun. And hopefully, we can keep the good times rolling throughout the preseason and into the regular season.

Coaches

John Fox (128-112 overall, 9-23 with Bears) vs. Bruce Arians (51-25-1, 42-22-1 with Cardinals)

Projected Starting Quarterbacks

Bears: Mike Glennon: 4,100 passing yards, 30 touchdowns, 15 interceptions, 59.4 completion percentage, 84.6 rating (21 career games)

versus

Cardinals: Carson Palmer: 4,233 passing yards, 26 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 61.0 completion percentage 87.2 rating (15 games in 2016)

Bears First-String

RB Jordan Howard (out, minor eye injury)

FB Michael Burton

WR Cameron Meredith, Kevin White

TE Dion Sims

OL Charles Leno Jr. (LT), Kyle Long (LG) (out), Cody Whitehair (C), Josh Sitton (RG), Bobby Massie (RT)

DE Akiem Hicks, Mitch Unrein (out)

NT Eddie Goldman

OLB Willie Young, Leonard Floyd

ILB Jerrell Freeman, Danny Trevathan (out)

CB Prince Amukamara, Marcus Cooper

S Quintin Demps, Adrian Amos

ST Connor Barth (PK), Pat O’Donnell (P), Patrick Scales (LS), Deonte Thompson (KR), Bryce Callahan (out) (PR)

Bears Second-String

QB Mark Sanchez

RB Jeremy Langford (out, but returned to practice this week)

FB Freddie Stevenson*

WR Victor Cruz, Markus Wheaton (out, pinky surgery)

TE Zach Miller

OL Bradley Sowell (LT), Cyril Richardson (LG), Hroniss Grasu (C), Will Poehls (RG), Tom Compton (RT)

DE Jaye Howard, Jonathan Bullard

NT John Jenkins

OLB Pernell McPhee (out, PUP list), Sam Acho

ILB John Timu, Nick Kwiatkoski

CB Bryce Callahan (out, ankle), Kyle Fuller (could be in line for a start and a big game because of injuries)

S Harold Jones-Quartey, Chris Prosinski

ST Benny Cunningham (KR), Cre’von LeBlanc (PR)

Bears Third-String

QB Mitch Trubisky*

RB Tarik Cohen*

WR Kendall Wright, Josh Bellamy (out)

TE Adam Shaheen*

DE Kapron Lewis-Moore (out), C.J. Wilson

NT Rashaad Coward*

OLB Lamarr Houston, Dan Skuta

ILB Christian Jones, Jonathan Anderson (out)

CB Cre’von LeBlanc, B.W. Webb

S Deon Bush, Deiondre’ Hall

ST Eddie Jackson* (PR) (moving up the depth chart without being moved up the depth chart)

Cardinals First-String

RB David Johnson

WR Larry Fitzgerald, John Brown (the rest of the receivers are riding the struggle bus, according to head coach Bruce Arians)

TE Jermaine Gresham

OL D.J. Humphries (LT), Mike Iupati (LG), A.Q. Shipley (C), Evan Boehm (RG), Jared Veldheer (RT)

DT Josh Mauro, Frostee Rucker

NT Corey Peters

OLB Chandler Jones, Markus Golden

ILB Karlos Dansby, Haason Reddick

CB Patrick Peterson, Justin Bethel

S Antone Bethea, Tyrann Mathieu a.k.a. The Honey Badger

ST Phil Dawson (PK), Matt Wile (P), Aaron Brewer (LS), Kerwynn Williams (KR, PR)

*Bears Rookie