With Point to Prove, Predicting Three Reasons Why Packers Will Beat Bears

For the better part of three decades, the Green Bay Packers beat, bashed and bullied the Chicago Bears. It was the most one-sided rivalry imaginable, a series turned around by Brett Favre and turned into a rout by Aaron Rodgers.

Finally, Packers-Bears means something again. Led by brash coach Ben Johnson, the Bears stunned the Packers twice in the span of four weeks last season. The Bears think they’re big … bleep – and they should think that way.

For the 214th time in series history, these ancient rivals will collide. Sunday’s showdown at Lambeau Field will be huge for Green Bay for a multitude of reasons. For the rivalry. For the standings. For themselves.

Here are three reasons why the Packers will win, with the other side of this story coming on Saturday evening.

The Packers this week didn’t have much to say in response to Bears coach Ben Johnson’s infamous “F*** the Packers” line from after last year’s playoffs or receiver Luther Burden proclaiming this week that the goal was to make the Packers quit.

“We’ll see them boys Sunday,” safety Javon Bullard said in response to Burden’s comment.

Only when it was pointed out the NFL had moved the kickoff from 3:25 p.m. to noon did Bullard break the ice.

“We’re trying to kick their ass. That’s the idea,” Bullard said. “Whether it’s at 7:15, 8:15, 1 o’clock, 3:45, it don’t really matter. We’re playing the Bears. They don’t like us, we don’t like them. It’s going to be primetime for us, regardless.”

The undefeated Vikings lead the NFC North, but the Bears have made an early statement that they are one of the best teams in the league. They’ve won back-to-back games with backup quarterbacks. Their supposedly luck-driven defense from last year is fourth in points allowed. Their third-down defense would make Mike Ditka’s 1985 Bears proud.

The Packers, on the other hand, must be one of the worst 2-2 teams of all-time. There’s nothing they have done at a playoff-caliber level. Moreover, they were humiliated in Week 16 at Chicago and humiliated again in the playoff rematch.

So, when Johnson says, “F*** the Packers,” of course it bothers players like Tucker Kraft.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I talk with my pads, so I’ll just wait ‘til Sunday.”

Really, nothing matters until the Packers beat the Bears. Literally nothing. The Packers have to beat the want-to-be bully Bears, no different than Ralphie had to beat up the bully Scott Farkus in A Christmas Story. They have to do it for the rivalry, for the standings, for their psyche.

The Packers are aware of all of these things. They’ll be ready in their own way for a game that’s important for the Bears but of critical importance for the Packers.

“Yeah, anytime it’s a division game, you kind of got to get your piss hot for the most part, understanding that these are going to have long-term effects on the standings for where we want to be at the end of the year,” safety Evan Williams said.

“And also carrying over from last year, understanding we also have a bad taste in our mouth from what happened. You can understand a 12-round fight. It’s going to be a fistfight for sure. We wouldn’t want anything else.”

Like we wrote last week, sometimes you don’t have to overthink things. The quarterback matchup is Jordan Love against Tyson Bagent.

Last week’s 17-14 win over Tampa Bay won’t be put on Love’s list of personal highlights. But he threw a couple touchdown passes, was given excellent pass protection and largely played mistake-play football until his late-game interception.

Asked about Love on Thursday, Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen said:

“Yeah, I see a guy that, if he’s got a clean pocket and he can throw the ball, in rhythm and timing, he’s as good as there is in the league. I think he’s an outstanding quarterback, and I think he’s a tough challenge for us.”

The “clean pocket” part is critical for all quarterbacks and demonstratively true for Love. When pressured, he’s completed 37.0 percent of his passes, averaged 6.1 yards per attempt and thrown zero touchdowns and two interceptions, good for a 43.0 passer rating. When protected, he’s completed 67.0 percent of his passes, averaged 7.1 yards per attempt and thrown eight touchdowns and one interception, good for a 110.0 passer rating.

In last year’s playoff loss to Chicago, Love was under siege during the second-half meltdown. He went 6-of-16 for 71 yards when pressured compared to 18-of-30 for 252 yards from a clean pocket.

With a new offensive line, Love was allowed to play a new game last week. That group could be even better this week with the presumed debut of Kevin Zeitler at right guard.

The Bears, meanwhile, are a middle-of-the-pack 13th in pressure percentage. There’s a chance for Love to have a good day. He’s had a bunch of them against Chicago. As noted by Stats Perform, Love has averaged 9.54 yards per attempt in six career starts against Chicago. That’s the second-highest for any quarterback who’s made at least five starts against an opponent behind only Lamar Jackson’s 10.33 vs. Miami.

And with a backup on the other side of the field, there’s a chance for the Packers’ defense to make a couple game-turning plays, as was the case against Tampa Bay’s Jalon Daniels last week.

There couldn’t possibly be a bigger statistical matchup than the teams’ rushing attacks. Chicago is first in the NFL with 196.3 rushing yards per game while Green Bay is last in the NFL with 58.0 rushing yards per game.

If the Bears enjoy a disparity of about 125 yards on Sunday, they are going to steamroll their way to a Mike Ditka-esque victory. However, a few things could make this a little less of a mismatch.

One, premier running back Kyle Monangai will not play. He entered the week ranked seventh in the NFL in rushing. Of the 38 backs with at least 30 rushing attempts, he’s eighth with 3.75 yards after contact per carry, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s really the driving force behind everything the Bears want to be about offensively.

Two, the Bears will have to lean on D’Andre Swift. Swift is an excellent player, to be sure, with three consecutive seasons of more than 1,250 rushing and receiving yards, but he fumbled twice last week against the Jets.

“We do ball security every single day,” Bears offensive coordinator Press Taylor told reporters this week, sounding a lot like Packers coach Matt LaFleur. “We start practice with ball security. We emphasize it. We make a great emphasis to our scout-team defense to make attempts at the ball. …

“The second (fumble) was egregious. That just goes back to our fundamentals, how we expect guys to carry the football. We talk about that every single Saturday. But when guys are out there, that’s the No. 1 point of emphasis on anything we do. We talk about scheme, but we talk about our fundamentals more than anything.”

Three, the Packers’ run game showed a little life last week in Laken Tomlinson’s debut at left guard. Now, Kevin Zeitler might make his debut at right guard. An interior trio of Tomlinson, center Sean Rhyan and Zeitler could be effective not just on Sunday but the long haul.

“We got the job done, man,” Rhyan said on Wednesday. “We were running the ball like we said we wanted to. Protecting like we said we were going to. Everything we said we wanted to do I think we did a pretty good job of doing. Obviously, we got to clean a few things up, but definitely took a step in the right direction.”

Four, Chicago’s run defense is a woeful 28th with 4.94 yards allowed per carry. In its one road game, at Carolina in the opener, the Bears allowed 125 yards on 22 carries, or 5.68 yards allowed per carry. They were 30th in yards allowed per carry in road games last year, too.

Added together, nobody should expect Kaleb Johnson to outrush Swift. But so long as the Packers don’t get run out of Lambeau Field on both sides of the ball, they’ll have a chance to spring the season-changing upset.

This article first appeared on Green Bay Packers on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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