QUARTERBACKS SPEAK
Trubisky and Rodgers discuss Sunday showdown at Lambeau Field
Cornerback Tramon Williams’ jab at Mitch Trubisky and the Bears after the Packers’ opening-week victory at Soldier Field didn’t cut quite as deeply as the classic 49ers taunt from their 23-0 victory over the Bears in the NFC Championship Game after the ’84 season — “Next time, bring an offense.”
But like that biting gibe that became fuel for the 1985 Bears, the pain in Williams’ critique of Trubisky after the Packers’ 10-3 victory in September was in its truth.
“We wanted to make Mitch play quarterback,” Williams said. ‘‘We knew they had a lot of weapons. We knew they were dangerous. But we knew if we could make Mitch play quarterback that we’d have a chance.”
The Packers indeed took away the Bears’ running game and took away Trubisky’s running game to force him to make plays in the passing game, and he came up way short. Trubisky completed 26 of 45 passes for 228 yards and no touchdowns and threw a crushing end-zone interception to former Bear Adrian Amos for a 62.1 passer rating.
Trubisky said he had not heard about Williams’ analysis — until it was brought up Wednesday at Halas Hall.
“I got enough motivation from the outside, and I guess that’s even more motivation,” Trubisky said. “I didn’t hear that. I don’t really care.”
Rather than fire back, Trubisky tacitly acknowledged that the truth hurts.
“I didn’t play the way I wanted to [in] the first game — that’s fairly obvious,” he said. “So for him to say something about it — I mean, that’s just an obvious statement, I guess. I want to play better. Got a great opportunity to do that this week.”
Williams’ analysis was framed as trash talk, but it was just sound strategy. Amos explained it in a less incendiary manner when asked about it Wednesday.
“We limited him from running,” said Amos, who played for the Bears from 2015 to 2018. “We were just sound. We played well together, and we didn’t let him have anything easy.”
Just as those Ditka-era Bears brought an offense the next time — beating the 49ers 2610 at Candlestick Park in 1985 on their way to winning Super Bowl XX — the 2019 Bears are hoping to show Williams and his teammates a better quarterback and a more proficient offense Sunday at Lambeau
Field.
After muddling through most of the season as other opponents applied the Packers’ strategy against
Trubisky, the
Bears’ offense has shown signs of getting it together. Trubisky threw for 338 yards, three touchdowns and a 118.1 rating in a victory over the Lions on Thanksgiving.
He backed that up against the
Cowboys’ ninthranked defense with three more touchdown passes, a 115.5 rating and 63 rushing yards in a 3124 victory last week.
Just as the offensive malaise was not totally on Trubisky, the recent renaissance is a team effort. The Bears’ offensive line is playing better. The running game is better. And, not coincidentally, Trubisky’s game has flourished. He was sacked five times against the Packers in Week 1. He has been sacked five times in the last three games — victories over the Giants, Lions and Cowboys.
“We’re kind of in a rhythm now; we’re a different team,” Trubisky said. “There were some things we had to go through in the first game and the beginning of the season that just didn’t go our way. And there’s things we learned from as an offense.
“I just feel like we have a newfound identity of what we want to do, and everybody is really locked in to what they have to do.”
“WE WANTED TO MAKE MITCH PLAY QUARTERBACK. WE KNEW THEY HAD A LOT OF WEAPONS. WE KNEW THEY WERE DANGEROUS. BUT WE KNEW IF WE COULD MAKE MITCH PLAY QUARTERBACK THAT WE’D HAVE A CHANCE.” TRAMON WILLIAMS, Packers cornerback
GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Bears-Packers rivalry never gets old for quarterback Aaron Rodgers. It’s easier to enjoy, of course, because he has owned it his entire career.
He is the bane of Chicago, demolishing dreams and getting coaches fired since 2008. He enjoys the boos at Soldier Field almost as much as he loves being king of the smallest city in professional sports. When he says he hears about the rivalry while buying groceries at Piggly Wiggly, which he describes as “about town,” he seems like he likes it.
“It’s always big Chicago against li’l Green Bay,” he said Wednesday. “Li’l Green Bay has held its own for a long time.”
As the teams prepare for their 200th meeting Sunday at Lambeau Field, Rodgers treasures the chance to bolster his legacy as a Bears slayer. He’s looking for his seventh season sweep after a 10-3 escape in the opener and gets the added incentive of effectively ending their playoff hopes.
He’s a historian and knows full well the Bears had firm control of the rivalry at 8058-6 until he and Brett Favre got their hands on it. With those two quarterbacking the Packers since 1992, they’re a devastating 4015 against the Bears.
“This rivalry’s been around a long time before I got here, and it’s going to be around a long time after I’m done, but it’s been fun to be a part of so many of them,” Rodgers said. “I know when Favre started, we were on the other side of this rivalry. Now, it’s nice to be up by three, I believe.”
The mere mention of the rivalry continuing beyond Rodgers’ retirement is tantalizing to Bears fans. But for now, just coming off his 36th birthday, the man remains redoubtable.
If he is declining, here’s what his version of a decline looks like: a 99.1 passer rating over the last three seasons. For context, Mitch Trubisky’s 95.4 last season set the franchise record for a quarterback with at least 250 attempts.
Rodgers’ latest evolution is that he doesn’t throw interceptions. He just doesn’t. Imagine that.
It has been two months since his last one, and he has thrown four over the last two seasons combined. That’s out of 1,118 dropbacks, including when he has taken a sack, meaning defenses are picking him off 0.4 percent of the times he has looked to pass.
This season, with the disclaimers that he’s still adjusting to new coach Matt LaFleur and the Packers don’t believe they’ve found their offensive identity, Rodgers is having what would be considered a dream year in Chicago: 23 touchdown passes, two interceptions and a 102.0 rating.
The Rodgers problem isn’t going away anytime soon for the Bears. They’ve had to learn to live with it, which can be exasperating. Packers safety Adrian Amos remembered the feeling from his four seasons with the Bears before crossing the border this year.
“You know you’re playing against a Hall of Fame quarterback, and you know what he can do,” Amos said. “And you know you can’t beat the Packers without beating Aaron.”
The Bears’ best hope is that the return of bulldozing defensive lineman Akiem Hicks — “He’s one of the best in the business,” Rodgers said — transforms their defense back into the NFL’s scariest.
If Hicks gets back to eating up two or three blockers at a time, it should clear the way for
Khalil Mack and Leonard Floyd to swarm Rodgers and perhaps pressure him into some uncharacteristically bad decisions.
The Bears got some of that going in the opener, when they smothered Rodgers other than on a string of big plays in the second quarter, and they did it to him in a win at Soldier Field a year ago. The game last December was one of the worst of his career.
It’s rare, but, for the Bears, at least it’s proof that it’s possible.