Packers in prime time rarely good for Bears
Cover your eyes: Bears-Packers in prime-time games can get really ugly
Be careful in asking, “Howbad can it really get?” Over the past 20 seasons, the Bears are 5-12 against the Packers in prime time. Many of those losses have been harrowing experiences.
Aaron Rodgers to Brandon Bostick. Touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers to Andrew Quarless. Touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers to Jordy Nelson. Another touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Touchdown. Touchdown. Touchdown.
That glowing scoreboard taunt seemed to burn into the retinas of every member of the Chicago Bears organization: 42-0 Green Bay Packers.
Six Rodgers touchdown passes. In the first half!
Do you remember that night, Chicago? The embarrassment. The humiliation. The despondency.
Six Novembers ago, the Bears went to Green Bay during an already wayward season and displayed on a prime-time stage just how broken they really were.
WBBM-AM780 sideline reporter Zach Zaidman stopped coach Marc Trestman on hisway into the locker room after the second quarter and, grasping for anything, wondered how the Bears would even begin to regroup.
“We’re not a good football team right now,” Trestman confessed. “So that’s the baseline for where we’re going to start the second half. We played 30 minutes of terrible football in all three phases. And we’ve got to just start over. That’s all we can do.”
Somewhere inside a luxury box at Lambeau Field, Bears Chairman George McCaskey and team President Ted Phillips were staggered. And stewing. Virginia McCaskey, as we would learn from her son eight weeks later during a front-office
and coaching staff detonation, was “pissed off.”
Onthat gravenight inGreenBay, the Bears hit rock bottom and passed the point of no return on their way there. A plunge toward last place had accelerated, and deep conversations about major organizational changes quickly grew more serious.
It felt awful — all of it — for everyone involved.
So be very careful this week in asking “How bad can it really get?” This season’s Bears are still frantically searching for answers, still attempting to gather themselves before their latest skid becomes a collapse.
And as they head back to Green Bay this weekend, they are coming off a week off, reeling from a four-game losing streak and still desperately trying to fix a malfunctioning offense that arguably is more discombobulated than it has been at any point in the last 15 years.
Matt Nagy and his coaching staff remain confident they found things during their off-week self-scouting mission that can, at the very least, help boost the offensive production. But theBears will be testing their latest troubleshooting methods under the white-hot spotlight of “Sunday Night Football.” With the rest of the league watching closely — and Rodgers challenging them to keep up— the challengewill be daunting.
Furthermore, in recent history, facing the Packers in prime time rarely has been a feel-good experience for the Bears or their tormented fan base. Over the previous 20 seasons, the Bears are 5-12 against the Packers in prime time. And many of those losses have been harrowing experiences, fully illuminating the team’s biggest flaws and most extreme failures.
History repeated
The nadir, of course, was that unmitigated disaster in 2014.
But that’s far from the only prime-time loss to the Packers that has felt like a Mike Tyson uppercut.
In 2003, Brett Favre and Ahman Green helped ruin the grand opening of the new SoldierField. Likereally ruined it. Packers 38, Bears 23.
In the early stages of a seven-sack mauling in 2012, Jay Cutler blew his lid and shoved offensive tackle J’MarcusWebb for all to see. Cutler and the Bears seemed rattled the entire night and lost 23-10.
The Mike Glennon experience at Lambeau Field in 2017 was as comical as it was ugly, a clumsy, sloppy, turnover-filled mess that ended with a 35-14 Bears loss and an earlier-than-hoped-for turn to Mitch Trubisky for help.
In 2018, Rodgers overcame a left knee injury and rallied the Packers from20 points down in the second half to punctuate a rousing 24-23 victory.
Heck, even on the way to the Super Bowl in 2006, the Bears closed the regular season with a 26-7 prime-time loss to the Packers, a drunken New Year’s Eve stumble in which Rex Grossman had more interceptions (three) than completions (two) on the 12 passes he threw, posting the dreaded 0.0 passer rating. Brian Griese came on in relief and threw two picks himself.
And don’t forget that just last season the Bears marched into the “Kickoff Game” of the NFL’s 100th season with the entire organization believing it was beginning an exhilarating journey toward the Super Bowl. The expectations were grand. The pregame electricitywas indescribable.
And then?
TheBears failed toscore a touchdown, lost 10-3 at Soldier Field and killed an entire city’s hopeful intoxication.
Unbeknownst to anyone in the moment, that night offered a discouraging sneak preview of the next 14 months. Way too muchoffensive ineptitude. Far toomanyugly losses. Yet another reminder that the Packers remain better equipped to attain success and better prepared to sustain it.
All in all, the Packers are still just better. And they often take advantage of the bright lights and big stage to prove it.
Worth a try
None of this is to declare that the Bears have no chance of pulling off a season-saving upset Sunday night. Sure, the oddsmakers believe the NFC’s longest current losing streak will tick up to five and sharpen Chicago’s agitation.
The Bears are 9 1⁄2- point underdogs. But with a top-tierdefense that is still the league’s best both on third down and inside the red zone, it’s highly improbable thatRodgerswill light the Bears up to the tune of 315 first-half yards and a half-dozen touchdown passes as he did six years ago.
Still, if that 2014 defense was the franchise’s beyond-repair unit, this season’s offense has been the obvious weak link with Nagy pulling the trigger on a quarterback change inWeek 3 yet somehowplunging the Bears into deeper disarray. In Nick Foles’ seven starts, the Bears averaged 16.7 points and 272.1 yards per game and just 2.8 yards per rushing attempt.
They lost five of those seven games and scored multiple times in just six of 28 quarters.
Now, with Foles battling his own slump plus a painful hip injury, the Bears opted for change again, turning back toTrubisky and asking the quarterback whom they benched in September and whose fifth-year contract option they declined last spring to take the steering wheelof a bottom-tier offensewith a depleted and overhauled offensive line.
And, oh by the way, Trubisky is still working back from a Nov. 1 right shoulder injury that made him inactive for games against the Titans andVikings.
On top of that, the last two seasons when Trubisky has returned from shoulder injuries, his first contest back— in 2018 versus the Rams and last season against the Saints— were, to put it nicely, shaky.
Moreover, Rodgers and the Packers are averaging 30.8 points per game in their 7-3 start. The Bears? They’ve reached 30 points as a team only three times in the last two seasons.
Still, the Bears suddenly are reaching for the Trubisky tonic to cure their headaches and nausea.
And Nagy is again whistling with optimism, hopeful that an eight-week benching might somehow finally bring out the best in his young quarterback on a regular basis.
“In this sport, in this world, in life, adversity strikes,” Nagy said.
“Sometimes people take that and make it a big-time positive. At times, when you think it’s the worst feeling in the world with what you’re going through, sometimes those moments are the best thing that ever happened to you.”
‘You have to fight’
Given the Bears’ grand-but-fading playoff aspirations, the Packers’ status as the NFC North leaders and the anxiety that comes with the Bears’ 42 days (and counting) victory drought, itmakes little sense to ignore the stakes of Sunday’s game or minimize the urgency. Nagy understands as much and emphasized thisweek that the Bears have to walk intoLambeauFieldwith anappropriate combination of confidence and resolve.
In his 2020 version of “Did youwatch the Colts game?” Nagy has proof fromWeek 11 that the Packers aren’t invincible, even when they’re playing well. Last weekend, a 28-14 halftime lead turned into a 34-31 overtime loss in Indianapolis. And forNagy, there was a message for his players folded within that game.
“You saw a (Packers) team that came out throwing a bunch of haymakers early on in that first half,” Nagy said. “And I thought Indianapolis did a really good job of weathering the storm. They never panicked.”
Little by little, the Colts chipped away. They cut thePackers’ lead to 11, then downto three. They tied the game, went ahead, then, after going into overtime, ultimately forced a fumble and turned it into a game-winning field goal.
“If there was anything we learned from that game,” Nagy said, “it’s that regardless if you are up by two scores or down by two scores, you have to fight and it will always come down to the very end.”
A defining moment
Fight has been an oft-used word at Halas Hall this week with players again relying on their determination and unity as an effective flotation device.
Said running back David Montgomery: “We’re fighters. We’re the Chicago Bears. That’s the definition of a Chicago Bear. You’re a fighter. Regardless of the situation, regardless of what it may look like, it’s being able to put the horse blinders and just focus on the task at hand.”
This week’s task might require the Bears to deliver their best performance of the season to upset a confidentPackers teamthat also has been snapped to attention after last week’s loss. Edge rusher Robert Quinn said the Bears are feeling “a prideful frustration” right now and have been both bothered and motivated by this four-game losing streak.
“As a team, we all look ourselves in the mirror and realize who we are and what we have here.”
The Bears still believe they have a playoff-caliber roster and a playoff-caliber defense and a playoff-caliber combination of belief and drive. Still, no one hasmistakenthe offense as playoff-caliber. And the Bears haven’t beaten playoff-caliber opponents regularly either. In 2018 and 2019 combined, only four of their 20 victories came against teams that qualified for the postseason.
This season, they are 1-4 against teams sitting inside theNFL’s playoff picture frame.
The Packers are waiting this weekend. And once again, for the Bears, this feels like a huge game and potentially a defining moment.