This is your Thursday Night Football open thread, for you to embrace and enjoy.

Washington Commanders (1-4) at Chicago Bears (2-3), October 13, 2022, 7:15 pm CDT

Location: Soldier Field, Chicago, IL.

TV: Amazon Prime Video

Radio: ESPN Radio 97.5 FM

Tonight’s game between the Washington Commanders (which is just one of the worst team names I’ve ever heard and I’m saying this as a Houston Texans fan) and the Chicago Bears is what I like to call an “Ice Cream Headache” game.

Imagine you’ve got a nice big bowl of ice cream; different flavors combined together, sprinkles, whipped cream, nuts, whatever you want). And sometimes when you eat ice cream too fast you get a rip-roaring headache that makes you wish you were dead, or at least wish you hadn’t eaten that ice cream.

The wait between the pain and relief feels like years but is probably closer to 30 seconds or so. And you think to yourself “I don’t want this anymore” only to see that there’s still a half a bowl left. So you gather up whatever courage you can muster and start slowly, and in a carefully controlled manner, resume eating your ice cream. Now the ice cream doesn’t taste quite as good, you’d much rather be doing anything else, but you do resume eating the ice cream.

The ice cream is NFL football. Last week’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos was the first half of the ice cream bowl where you made yourself ill and your brain felt like it would collapse into itself.

The second half of the ice cream bowl is tonight’s game pitting the pitiful Washington Commanders up against the equally pitiful Chicago Bears. You’re going to eat it, you’re going to hate it, you’re going to hate life while eating it, but you will finish it. Because at the end of the day, it’s still ice cream, and ice cream is friggin’ delicious.

Same with tonight’s game: Last week gave you a headache, maybe a bit of nausea, I don’t know, I’m no doctor. But this week, you’re prepared for the pain, you know it’s going to be bad but you’re going to watch because at the end of it all, it’s still, technically, NFL football and you (like me) are going to watch tonight.

As far as I’m concerned, in this ice cream headache game, the best part will be getting to see former Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch join Amazon’s TNF coverage team. He’s the cherry on the top of this sundae of pain we’re about to watch.

This is your Thursday night open thread. If you’d like to bet on tonight’s game, here are my picks for TNF.

As you can see, the Commanders are a 1-point favorites in tonight’s game, according to DraftKings Sportsbook. And considering how bad the Bears are, judging by how they played against the Houston Texans, a one point spread should worry you purely from a “watchable football” perspective. I’ll take the Bears to cover and to win.

Enjoy the game y’all. And try not to eat all your ice cream at once.