Packers’ Rout of Bears Will Hopefully Keep Fueling NFL’s Best Current Rivalry

Here is what a healthy fear looks like: 14:55 to go in the fourth quarter and the Packers are up 29–7. Matt LaFleur keeps the offense on the field because a 22-point lead doesn’t feel like quite enough. Three full scores, each with two-point conversions is better. There’s a (football) maniac on the other side of the field with the highest-powered offense in the NFL, and he’s about to switch backup quarterbacks. And so, Jordan Love trots out onto the field with 11-personnel and motions the tight end to the slot. The clever, little short-yardage play creates a tiny bracket of space for Matthew Golden to settle and nab the ball for a two-point conversion and that precious 24-point lead over the Bears.

After a pick on the following possession, the very next play call with a 24-point lead: play-action and another deep shot, with Golden again on the other end. The Packers were playing with the Tecmo Bowl–era 49ers’ playbook on Sunday, which consisted of precision deep shots a quarter mile down the field, one after the next. Something tore the roof off Chicago’s defense and Love, according to Next Gen Stats, racked up more passing yards on deep throws than at any other point in his career and the most of any quarterback this season. Four of those explosive passing plays went more than 40 yards, which, for perspective, is more than the season total for 24 NFL teams. Christian Watson said it a few days ago, perhaps the one bit of bravado that leaked out of a Packers camp that had been prodded by the Bears, and really, on a consistent basis for the past year and a half: The Bears have holes defensively; they just had to find them.

This was the game in which nothing affected the Packers. In which MarShawn Lloyd finally dropped his shoulder and leveled someone. In which the Packers’ front seven swarmed and cut off any attempts by Ben Johnson to generate explosive touches on easy throws for his No. 2 quarterback. In which Xavier McKinney looked, once again, like a player with a magnetic field that only attracts errant footballs. In which actually running the ball with force mattered not in generating effective play-action.

And we had fear to thank for all of it, which is the point I worry we’re all missing after the Packers absolutely smashed Chicago 31–7. Johnson vs. LaFleur IV. What Johnson said about it being the start of Packers week the second his Week 4 game ended, avoiding the name of his hated rival like Voldemort: “You all know what week it is … enough said.” How LaFleur clapped back by saying the game was about the players, which, to me, felt like a not-so-subtle reference to the way Johnson has a guttural display of excitement after nearly every victory, which, LaFleur felt, should be reserved for the people actually taking the thumps and bruises. How the Packers’ social media team waited all but four seconds to spit Johnson’s words back in his face. How their postgame handshake was shorter than a freshly-minted divorce text message. Each and every Packers player, having absorbed the little pokes and prods during the week, with an especially pronounced shout-out to Luther Burden, whose comments about making the Packers want to quit were heard loud and clear. All of it mattered in producing a performance we saw Sunday.

We got the absolute best out of an incomplete, injury-riddled football team and, on the other side, we got glimpses of a coach in Johnson who was truly emotionally short-circuited, the way someone would authentically be after a loss that broke their heart. I don’t need to point out how little this actually happens in sports anymore. Most of our best NFL games of the season are played in a faraway time zone incomprehensible to the human body on short rest and end in blowouts. Or on synthetic turf that snags players’ legs like Pennywise from a gutter. So rarely anymore, in a day and age where players are already plotting their postgame jersey swap, does a palpable hatred exist from beginning to middle to end … and long after that. This rivalry is real. This is everyone either getting their best, or getting embarrassed when they don’t have it.

And my hope is that, after losing a game like that, Johnson doesn’t feel the need to change. To mute his celebrations. To stop treating Packers week like a helicopter drop into some deep war-torn jungle. Just like I hope LaFleur never adjusts his posture as the unamused older-brother figure, who still side-eyes Johnson like the one without an invite who shows up at the neighborhood cookout. I don’t want anyone to hate anyone in this world, but I kind of need Johnson to continue to hate the Packers and tell us about it. I kind of need LaFleur to stand in the mirror and perfect how he’ll say the word … Ben … in a postgame handshake before walking off to the locker room.

I remember how sad it was watching Rex Ryan, for example, get beaten down and whittled into something totally unfamiliar and unauthentic to his actual personality once the big losses came. By the time he moved on to the Bills and attempted to turn it back on again, it looked like a comedian doing an impression of a man who once, to me, defined not giving a s--- what other people thought. Ryan is just an outlier example, though. We see this happen to every head coach who gets elbowed in the gut either personally or schematically. The entire persona that they have worked a lifetime to cultivate buckles in on itself like a suspiciously bidded New Jersey construction project. Self consciousness takes over. A corporate miasma stinks up the entire atmosphere, one in which we wanted dearly to be fun.

The chaos that has erupted between Bears and Packers fans is beautiful. Every bit of it. The haughtiness. The traded insults. The excuse making. This, just weeks after accusing the other side of excuse-making. And here, at its perceived zenith, is where we often push it to its exhaustion point. Here is where we tend to take peak fun and, through mass pontification and reasoning and endless pearl clutching, ruin what is essential to football. That’s what we should be afraid of more than anything else. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for LaFleur-Johnson V on Christmas.

Add us as a preferred source on Google