Avengers’ endgame? pack hope so
After bears ended rival’s season in 2018, green bay would love to knock out reigning division champs
With the Bears leading by 10 and about three minutes left on Dec. 16, 2018, inside linebacker Roquan Smith tipped an Aaron Rodgers pass, sending the ball into the arms of safety Eddie Jackson, who was standing on the left leg of the letter “A” in BEARS in Soldier Field’s south end zone.
With that, the Packers were eliminated from playoff contention, and the Bears clinched the NFC North, striking a rare recent blow in the sport’s greatest rivalry.
Jackson’s emotions were complicated by the fact that his interception return resulted in a high ankle sprain that cost him the rest of the season. But he remembers, in the moment, thinking of everything the organization had been through the season before — a 5-11 record that got coach John Fox fired.
Sitting at his locker this week, he settled on a description.
“It’s like your child being born,” he said.” It’s one of those moments you won’t ever forget.”
Circumstances made it sweeter. In the 2018 opener, Matt Nagy’s first game as a head coach, the Bears blew a 20-point lead to a superhuman Rodgers at Lambeau Field. The loss motivated the Bears throughout the season on their way to a 12-4 record.
“That’s a memory we’ll always have,” Nagy said.
On Sunday, the Packers might be saying the same. This time, they’ll try to end the Bears’ season.
“It felt good, but it’s a new year,” Jackson said. “Different things are at stake. Where we’re at in the season is a lot different.”
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There’s poetic symmetry between this year and last.
Like Nagy, Matt LaFleur’s first game as a head coach came in the season opener at his rival’s home. Like Nagy, he can clinch a postseason berth and knock his rival out of playoff contention by winning at home in Week 15. A victorious Packers team would need help to force that finality — the Rams must lose for the Packers to clinch a playoff spot, and the Vikings or Rams must win to knock out the Bears — but there’s no doubting the stakes.
“There’s those type of opportunities just about every year we play each other,” Rodgers said. “You’re usually always playing for something when you play division opponents, but especially Chicago. Because last year I think it was kind of us getting our season officially ended down there in Week 15. It’s part of the rivalry.”
Sunday will mark the 200th meeting in the NFL’s oldest — and, given the circumstances, closet — series. The Packers lead 98-95-6 after winning 14 of the last 17 regular-season meetings. They also lead in scoring, but only by 45 points, 3,409-3,364.
Sunday could mark the fourth time this decade one team has ended the other’s season. The Packers beat the Bears in the NFC Championship Game in January 2011. Aaron Rodgers’ 48-yard touchdown pass to Randall Cobb with 38 seconds left in the 2013 season finale kept Marc Trestman’s first team out of the playoffs. And then the Bears eliminated the Packers last year.
“Since I’ve been here, they’ve been pretty big, in the sense that we’ve both had good, contending football teams,” said receiver Allen Robinson, in his second season with the Bears. “This game right here, I wouldn’t say that it’s a measuring stick, but it’s meaningful for us. And meaningful for them, too.” For different reasons.
“Our last couple games have been all must-wins,” cornerback Prince Amukamara said. “The Packers game is always huge for everybody. We know what it is going into this weekend.”
The Packers want to bury their rivals the way the Bears did last year.
“You talk about within the division, the Bears as defending NFC North champions — I think both of us got a lot to play for right now,” LaFleur said. “I know it’s going to have that playoff feel to it.”
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LaFleur had coached at Soldier Field as an assistant, but he didn’t feel it crackle until Week 1.
“It was electric,” he said.
The Bears and Packers opened the NFL’s 100th season on a Thursday night, an acknowledgement of their role in the league’s founding. The hype was at a fever pitch — and then the Packers won a snoozer 10-3. It seems so long ago.
“The whole 100-years thing, it was a big game then,” Robinson said. “And that was the first game of the year, when everybody was 0-0.”
It proved a harbinger of trouble for the 7-6 Bears and a catalyst for the 10-3 Packers.
“I try not to remember too much of that
— that was a rough one,” Nagy said. “But I think for us more so than forget the offensedefense-special teams part, I think for us, going into that week, you know you’re kicking off the NFL season. You’re at home, it’s a big rivalry game, all that. For us, we got to just kind of see, ‘OK, this is how we responded to that.’ We know we want to be better. It wasn’t good.”
The Bears believe quarterback Mitch Trubisky is better than he was in Week 1. Asked how he had changed in the last 14 weeks, Trubisky said he has learned to block out noise.
“Adversity — obviously, early in the season with people talking on the outside and then having to play through injuries and stuff — and just coming together closer as a team,” he said. “My teammates having my back, that really gives me the most confidence. And then just going out there and, over the last couple of weeks just putting this team in a position to win. And it feels good when you’re winning.”
Jackson thinks about both season-opening defeats often. He let out a frustrated, guttural grunt when reliving this year’s Packers loss.
“It really had you real upset and frustrated because you wanted that one bad,” he said. “Now we get a little chance to get some revenge.”
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Kicker Eddy Pineiro has never been to Lambeau Field, but he knows what to expect.
“It’s going to be cold,” he said. “Can’t hide from that.”
The Bears indoctrinate each new class of players into the rivalry every year.
“Nothing’s like Green Bay-Chicago, man,” defensive lineman Akiem Hicks said. “It’s just different. I think it’s because we’re in such close proximity. I think it gets a little bit tighter.”
Last season, the team’s matriarch explained it herself. In a rare speech in front of the team, Virginia McCaskey talked about the rivalry six days before the 2018 opener.
“When she came and spoke to everyone, I think everyone was like, ‘All right — you see what a real, real deal this is,’ ” Jackson said. “She doesn’t like them at all.”
Before kickoff of last year’s second meeting, Packers executives told McCaskey that if they couldn’t make the playoffs, they’d be rooting for her team.
The feeling wasn’t mutual. “They’re nicer than I am,” she said later. Sunday might test that very scenario. “No matter the record, no matter what it is, you have to come to play,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t have to be explained. Everybody knows it’s one of those games where you go out there, it’s gong to be tough, it’s going to be grimy. It’s going to be a fight, a real dogfight. No one likes each other.” ✶