Bears Notebook: Monday night spotlight suits Lovie Smith

The Bears own a 7-2 record on Monday nights since Lovie Smith became coach in 2004, which is considerably better than the franchise's 23-34 overall Monday night mark.

By Gene Chamberlain

Sep 28, 2012 at 5:42 pm ET • 1 min read

Bears coach Lovie Smith says he likes the prime-time stage of Monday Night Football. (AP)

The Bears own a 7-2 record on Monday nights since Lovie Smith became coach in 2004, which is considerably better than the franchise's 23-34 overall Monday night mark.

Some of it has to do with their practice and travel approach.

"We have routines that we go through, that we've gone through for many years based on a Thursday night or a Monday night so it's not that big of an issue for us," Smith said.

Some teams dislike the disruption of the Sunday-to-Sunday routine but the Bears won't be able to settle into that until late season as their final six games are slated for Sunday day games.

"In an ideal world that's how you would do it," Smith said of Sunday-to-Sunday. "But you know, we want to play in prime time. To me this is a normal week for a Monday night game for us."

Return engagement: DB D.J. Moore has been in the news lately more for his mouth than his defensive skills, but Monday night he hopes to change that by making big plays at a place where he made an impact for the first time. In 2010, Moore picked off Tony Romo twice in a 27-20 victory for his first two career INTS. "Catching tipped passes pretty much," Moore said. "Everybody else was tackling pretty hard and I was just a beneficiary of being in the right place at the right time." Moore was the one player who spoke out against Jay Cutler's treatment of J'Marcus Webb in the Week 2 loss to Green Bay, then made a silly remark about liking Cutler so much that he'd have his baby if he could prior to last week's game -- causing Cutler to remark that some players need "to be muzzled."

Injury update: DE Julius Peppers returned to the practice field after a day off to rest while LB Brian Urlacher was given his normal day off of rest. ... Running back Matt Forte continued to practice on a limited basis due to his ankle injury and WR Earl Bennett practiced on a limited basis due to a hand injury. ... Long snapper Patrick Mannelly returned to practice after missing Thursday due to illiness. ... FB Evan Rodriguez (knee) missed practice.