Day of Liberation for Bears

With all due respect to the late President Gerald Ford, the Bears' long national nightmare is over.

The Aaron Rodgers trade is official.

Rodgers is gone from behind the cheese wall and is now in New York, officially traded in a swap that sounds lopsided in Green Bay's favor considering the former Packers QB turns 40 this year.

That is, unless you take into account this is Rodgers.

The trade had taken so long to be finalized that for the Bears it had to seem worthwhile to throw in a draft pick themselves just to sweeten the deal so the NFC North could finally be rid of this menace.

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— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) April 24, 2023

Rodgers had a 24-5 record in starts against the Bears and this really seems to be an incorrect figure. It seems there was no way they really won five starts against him. He haunted them from the time he came into the league as the 24th pick in the 2005 draft.

The Bears had two first-round picks that year but they were "set" at quarterback. They had Rex Grossman. So they drafted Cedric Benson with the fourth pick. They could have easily had Rodgers, just like about any other team.

So Rodgers is gone and there is this left:

Eight straight wins over the Bears, the longest winning streak he has ever had over them. The Bears haven't beaten him since Eddie Jackson picked off a deflected pass in the end zone in December of 2018 to clinch the NFC North title.

A career passer rating of 109.0 with 64 touchdown passes and only 10 interceptions against the Bears.

Chris Conte loses Randall Cobb on a fourth-and-8 48-yard touchdown pass Rodgers threw in the closing seconds to win the NFC North title over the Bears in 2013 at Soldier Field. Rodgers stepped away from Julius Peppers' pass rush to throw the ball.

The Bears losing a 2010 game to the Packers to close the regular season when they could have eliminated Rodgers. And then he comes back to beat them in the NFC championship game at Soldier Field.

The 2018 opener and start of the Matt Nagy era, when Khalil Mack destroyed the Packers in the first half with his devastating pass rush and Rodgers left injured, before coming back miraculously with a sore knee and leading Green Bay back from a 20-point second-half deficit to a 24-23 win.

The 60-yard bomb Rodgers threw on third-and-11 in 2016 to Jordy Nelson to set up a last-second winning field and avoid an overtime game.

There were too many real disappointments for the Bears to recall in this twice-a-year rivalry.

Rodgers even beat them with is legs when it wasn't his arm. He eluded sacks so often to gain big yardage that the 300-plus rushing yards he had against the Bears seemed like 3,000.

One of their only highlights against Rodgers was actually an injury, when failed first-round draft pick Shea McClellin broke his collarbone and Seneca Wallace had to finish. It was one of those five losses Rodgers is saddled with in this series.

No doubt Rodgers would have come back and won it if it hadn't been a broken bone.

If Rodgers didn't beat them with his arm or legs, he did it with his mind.

"He knows what the hell you're going to be in," former Bears defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano once complained.

Pagano said he saw Rodgers standing and watching their sidelines between plays to see personnel coming in because he knew all their personnel packages and tendencies.

"He finds the matchup he wants and then he exploits it," Pagano complained.

Now Rodgers is in the AFC and there will be no more counting cards against the Bears defense.

Unless the Bears finish in the same place in their division as the Jets do in theirs in 2023, they may never again have to face Rodgers. He might not be in the league by the time they would be regularly scheduled to play the Jets again, in 2026. He'd be 42 years old then, 43 if it was late in the season.

Even if he is and faces them once more, it's not the same doing it from afar.

It's not the same if he does it with a team other than Green Bay.

Rodgers hollered "I still own you," at the Bears and their fans in 2021 at Soldier Field. No one can doubt this has been true.

There is no such thing as absentee ownership in the NFL.

Consider Rodgers' rights now forfeit, and it's there for the McCaskey family to reclaim.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven