Hands Up If You Also Can’t Wait for the Bears-Vikings WK2 NFC North Showdown

Of all the Week 2 matchups on the board, the desk at The Rich Eisen Show kept circling back to one: Ben Johnson against Brian Flores, Bears against Vikings, and a real chance it is the game of the week.

It also might be one of those truth or lie games, the kind that tells you whether Week 1 meant anything.

On the Chicago side, the enthusiasm is not subtle. One member of the desk is "all in on the Bears this year," with Caleb Williams and Luther Burden III on a fantasy roster to prove it. But the worry is right there, too. Flores runs a blitz happy defense, and the Vikings came after Jordan Love about 70 percent of the time in Week 1.

That set up the questions that will decide Sunday. Can the Bears run the way they ran all over Carolina, and can they do it against Minnesota? And what does Carson Wentz look like in Week 2 with a full week of reps and film study as QB1, facing a Bears defense that just gave up almost 40 to Bryce Young and company?

"I don't know if I want to take Minnesota here. I'm talking myself into Minnesota," came one admission, and it did not get argued down much. The consensus was that this could be a sneaky good game.

The counterweight is Caleb Williams, who looked unstoppable in the opener. Nobody on the desk expects that to be a weekly thing. The Bears are not "going to score 50 every week," someone noted. "Of course not. And definitely not on a Brian Flores defense."

The best part of the segment was not a take at all. It was Johnson, asked whether there is a trap in overthinking a coordinator like Flores, someone accomplished whom he has faced so many times. The reporter's question spiraled into trying to guess "what he thinks you think he thinks you think he thinks" Johnson is going to do.

Johnson's answer was perfect. "Yeah. Yes, there is."

Asked how he avoids going down that path, he didn't pretend. "I'm in that path right now."

The desk loved it, and it spoke to something real about this matchup. These head coaches and coordinators know each other so well, and they are always trying to get inside each other's heads. At a certain point it becomes a chess match, and the question is whether you are outsmarting yourself.

What makes Chicago so dangerous is what it showed on offense in Week 1. The rushing total "felt like 2,000," one member of the desk joked. "It really did." The whole thing was described as masterful. The Bears were so explosive and so dynamic that they barely needed some of their pass catchers. Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland had zero catches. Burden was barely involved.

That is exactly why Sunday matters. Flores will blitz. Johnson admits he is already overthinking it. And the whole desk is watching to see which version of both teams shows up.