Seahawks vs. Bears Predictions, Odds & Picks: NFL Week 17

Seattle Seahawks (8-7 SU, 6-8-1 ATS) vs. Chicago Bears (4-11 SU, 6-7-2 ATS)
NFL Football Week 17
Date/Time: Thursday, December 26, 2024 at 8:15PM EST
Where: Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois
TV: Prime Video

The Seattle Seahawks take on the Chicago Bears at Soldier field on Thursday Night Football. This game, one day after Christmas Day, features two teams that enter the final stages of the regular season in poor form. For the Bears, it’s more the standard procedure—a 4-11 season that saw their coach get canned in midseason, now mired in a streak of 9 straight losses, including a 34-17 loss to the Bears at home on Sunday. They are back home again, hosting a Seattle team that picked a bad time to start compiling losses. Sunday’s tough 27-24 loss to the Vikings sending them to 8-7 and putting their playoff future in some danger. What’s the right move for this game?

Assessing the Seahawks

It has been an up-and-down season for a Seattle team that has gone through a lot this season, starting off great, going into the tank, bouncing back, and now on the bad side of things again, with two straight losses. The previous week’s loss against Green Bay was a bad, non-competitive loss. Against the Vikes on Sunday, however, some things looked better. A dinged-up Geno Smith had one of his better games in a while, going for over 300 yards. Receivers DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba each caught touchdown passes. In the end, however. They just didn’t have enough answers for Justin Jefferson, who torched this Seattle “D” and scored the big TD late to seal it.

Seattle’s last two weeks could send a message out there that they’re easy pickings, but I’d stop short of thinking that on the basis of coming up short to a pair of good NFC North teams. This is a bad time of the year to start taking losses. They went from having a lead in the division to now being forced to win games to either take control of the division again or forge a wild card spot out of the deal. And while this is on the road in a tough place to play late in the year, the difficulty of opponent decreases enough here to make it so some of the things Seattle does well can stick better than it has the last couple of weeks.

Bears: Still Dangerous?

A team that has seen all the bad things happen that Chicago has with a 9-game losing streak coming into this, they won’t command much respect. And sure, things got worse and worse with a team that looked to maybe be pretty good earlier in the season. Still, they can jump up and get you in the right spots. Rookie QB Caleb Williams was over 300 yards again on Sunday, and while the offense certainly has issues, he can be quite productive with a good group of receivers who can all have big games here and there. For a team on the heels of 9 straight losses, that aerial offense can be a real pain, especially for teams like Seattle, whose results in that area can vary greatly.

The Bears are out of it. They have no real ax to grind with the Seahawks to make them stronger and embrace the spoiler role. Their team is now run by Thomas Brown, a somewhat surprise OC hire based on how his only work as an offensive coordinator was on a bad 2023 Panthers team. And while you see this team still doing some good things on offense here and there, the team as a whole is in the toilet. The losses are stockpiling, and they have given up 30 or more points in each of their last three games. You keep hearing about how their defense can be tough. They have some talented defensive backs and can be good against the pass. It really isn’t something that should be too concerning to Geno Smith and this Seattle offense.

Hope for Seattle

While they have been wildly inconsistent this season, with several different losing and winning streaks, it also shows the Seahawks can switch form on a dime. Time and again this season, they defy what you had been seeing leading up to that point. Plus, one sees the Seattle offense rounding more into a state of full power. Against Minnesota, the Seahawks weren’t able to run the ball with much pizzazz, but Kenneth Walker was just getting back into the swing of things after missing some time, and maybe that’s a part of their offense they can wield better on the Chicago defense, enabling them to dip more into their bag of weapons. Also, there’s a clearcut level of urgency now, with the light at the end of the tunnel coming more into plain sight. And if they want to go into LA the following week to close out the regular season with a little head of steam, performing well in this spot is critical.

Lay the Number on the Road-Favorite

Truth be told, the Bears are a little dangerous for a team that has lost nine straight games. On the right day, Williams and those receivers can find a groove and force opponents to play well to overcome them. With a Seattle team capable of wildly divergent levels of play, it’s maybe not the worst angle. I just think the Seahawks deserve a little benefit of the doubt, and despite not taking this part of the season by the horns just yet, urgency and desperation will register now, and whatever happens, they at least get through this one. I’m going to take Seattle.

Loot’s Prediction to Cover the Point Spread:

I’m betting on the Seattle Seahawks minus 3.5 points.