The Packers-Bears rivalry has returned in a way we haven't seen in modern NFL history
Sure, it took an absurd slew of injuries for Chicago to finally beat the Packers in a big game, but the Bears did. And that's just not something they could have said for decades.
Good morning.
There’s no exclamation point today because what happened on Saturday night left so many fans reeling, wondering how the hell the Packers lost that game. And they’re right to wonder.
Today’s newsletter focuses on that question because this Chicago Bears team, coached by Ben Johnson and quarterbacked by the volatile Caleb Williams, has started to change this rivalry in ways Green Bay fans may not like.
In other words … they’re catching up.
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It was the kind of game the Chicago Bears lost for almost 40 years straight. Once a hit to the head knocked Jordan Love out of the game, Chicago Bears fans no doubt had flashbacks to 2018, or as many of a certain age refer to it, the most thrilling half of football of their sentient lives. But they also remember how that game ended, with Aaron Rodgers doing his best Temple of Doom impression and ripping their hearts out in front of an enthralled audience.
Malik Willis nearly did the same. Imagine if DeShone Kizer had been able to architect the same type of heroic comeback on national television. Bears fans would have never lived it down, as they suffered through the ‘18 game with, “Randall Cobb again.”
But this 22-16 overtime loss evinced something closer to the 2015 NFC Championship Game against the Seattle Seahawks. Caleb Williams threw an impossible touchdown pass against an all-out blitz in much the same fashion Russell Wilson executed a two-point conversion on a heave that stayed in the air for what felt like an eternity. No Packers fan needs reminding of the onside kick debacle in Seattle that day, nor the beautiful rainbow touchdown pass the opposing quarterback foisted upon the Green Bay defense to win the game.
The last time the Bears won a late-season battle between two teams fighting for true playoff positioning, Lyndon Johnson was president.
For decades, the Packers could treat their southern neighbors like a little cousin — to call them brothers would be to give Chicago too much credit. He’d show up wishing so badly to impress the older cousin, yet barely register their existence.
It was nothing to beat the Bears. They were in the same pitiful and pathetic category as the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions.
That’s over.
Sure, it took overtime for the favored Bears to beat a Packers team without Jordan Love, Micah Parsons, Tucker Kraft, Evan Williams, Zach Tom, and Elgton Jenkins, just to name a few.
But they’re a game competitor in a way they haven’t been with any consistency in quite some time.
Part of that stems from a quarterback who can play a similar role to the aforementioned Wilson: be brutally inefficient for three quarters, then get preposterously hot and make three inconceivable plays by sheer prestidigitation to help win the game.
Caleb Williams lacks the consistency, at least at the moment, to be an elite quarterback, but like Jay Cutler before him, he can be dangerous as hell. Unlike Cutler, Williams’ best advantage is his coach, a sly, arrogant son of a bitch (meant as both a compliment and an insult) who can provide opportunities for the former No. 1 overall pick to show off his arm talent.
On the game-winning touchdown throw of nearly 60 yards, D.J. Moore had roughly a half-yard separation according to Next Gen Stats. Williams put it right in his outstretched arms.
It’s not cope to suggest the Packers win if even one or two of the team’s injured star players show up in Chicago on Saturday night. The Bears, for all of their injuries (they had half a dozen starters out as well), can’t claim the same because the injured Packers were much more important, impactful players with the possible exception of Kyler Gordan. But even he doesn’t rise to the level of importance of Parsons or Kraft.
The problem for Green Bay is that it was star running Josh Jacobs who fumbled inside the five on first-and-goal. It was Xavier McKinney who dropped another interception that led to three Bears points. And Romeo Doubs, theoretically the most reliable receiver on the team, booted the onside kick attempt.
These are core players for the Packers.
Even with all the injuries, all the red zone struggles — and they were myriad! — and the mistakes, the Packers were one onside kick recovery and a first down from beating the Bears, and setting nature on the parsimonious path. That’s how this has looked seemingly from time immemorial … at least dating back to Mike Ditka.
Ironically, Aaron Rodgers saved the Packers on Sunday. He helped the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Detroit Lions, setting up Green Bay to need a lone win in the final two weeks to make the playoffs. The last time Rodgers had the chance to send the Packers to the playoffs against Jared Goff and the Fightin’ Dan Campbells, he couldn’t manage a win.
This time, three years later, he comes through against the team he’d owned just as much as the Bears over the course of his Packers career.
If Green Bay wins out and Chicago loses out, the Packers can still win the division, but even against the San Francisco 49ers and a game Lions team you know wants to beat Ben Johnson again, that feels like too tall a task.
More likely, Matt LaFleur’s team has another date with Chicago destiny: a 2-7 matchup with the Bears at Soldier Field on Wild Card weekend. It’ll be the biggest game in the NFL’s most storied rivalry since the last time these two teams played. Which was preceded by the biggest game in the rivalry in the last 15 years.
For better and for worse, the Packers-Bears rivalry is back in a way it hasn’t been since Vince Lombardi and George Halas. History is once again upon us.