Milestones Highlight Latest Win Over Bears
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Beating the Chicago Bears was as easy as one, two, three for the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night.
Not to mention 30, 100, 400, 500 and 50,000.
It was a night of milestones as the Packers improved to 8-3, grabbed a three-game lead in the NFC North and stayed on the heels of New Orleans (9-2) for the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
30: With four touchdown passes, Aaron Rodgers is up to 33 for the season. He’s reached 30-plus touchdowns seven times in his career, tied for fourth-most in NFL history.
Rodgers credited the play of his offensive line. He has been sacked zero or one time in 10 of 11 games. Not coincidentally, he’s hit a 100 passer rating and threw two-plus touchdown passes in each of those games.
“For a soon-to-be 37-year-old, that’s my dream,” Rodgers said of the sack total. “That’s an amazing feeling to go home and not be feeling like an almost-37-year-old. I’ve been feeling really, really good all season, so I appreciate those boys up front. This was a really important game for us. I think we downplayed it in the right way to not put any added pressure on ourselves. It’s huge momentum for us winning this one as far as the division is concerned and, obviously, we’re in the mix for the top seed, as well.”
50: Only twice in NFL history has a quarterback thrown 50-plus touchdown passes with a 100-plus passer rating against a team. Both are by Rodgers, according to NFL Research. Rodgers has thrown 51 touchdown passes with a 105.3 passer rating against the Bears. He’s also thrown 50 touchdown passes with a 108.5 rating against the Vikings.
100: This was victory No. 100 in the series for Green Bay. Amazingly, when the Bears beat the Packers 30-10 at Lambeau on Oct. 25, 1992, they extended their margin in the series to what seemed an insurmountable 81-58-6. Now, the Packers are up 100-95-6.
Rodgers is 19-5 in 24 regular-season starts and 20-5 when you include the NFC Championship Game in 2010.
“That’s 20 percent of the wins, which is pretty special,” Rodgers said. “Proud to be another one of the guys in the lineage of Green Bay quarterbacks who had an opportunity to lace them up against Chicago. We’ve obviously won a good deal of my starts. I feel good about where we’re at. With Favrey and me, we were down a decent amount in the series and now we’re up five.”
400: Rodgers’ second touchdown of the night went to Marcedes Lewis. It was catch No. 400 of his career.
500: Rodgers’ first touchdown of the night went to Davante Adams. It was catch No. 500 of his career. He reached 500 catches in his 95th game, one less than Sterling Sharpe for fastest in franchise history. Adams has 74 catches for 908 yards and 11 touchdowns this season despite missing two-and-a-half games with an injured hamstring. He is the only player in the Super Bowl era with 70 catches, 900 yards and 10 touchdowns in his first nine games.
“It means a lot,” Adams said of the milestone. “It’s kind of crazy thinking about it. It’s a lot of catches, especially knowing that Marcedes has played as long as he has. Obviously, I’m a receiver, he’s a tight end, but to play as long as he has and he has 400, to just to compare those two is kind of crazy. But I mean, we ain’t done yet. I’m definitely not looking up until this thing is done. So, hopefully we can double that. And we’ll see where everything is.”
50,000: Rodgers’ 39-yard touchdown pass to tight end Robert Tonyan pushed him over 50,000 passing yards in his career. He became the 11th player in NFL history to reach 50,000. Rodgers reached the milestone on his 6,436th career passing attempt. Only Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger (6,361) got there faster.
“I remember Favre-y talking about some of the milestones like this mean you’ve been around a long time, played a lot of games,” Rodgers said. “There’s also the consistency aspect of that, being able to stay healthy for a decent amount of my career minus a couple of collarbones, and then being efficient for so long. There’s a lot that goes into 50,000 yards. I’m proud of it. It’s more of a longevity record, which, playing behind Favre, you realize how important it is to stay on the field and play through injuries and I’ve always prided myself on trying to do that. It was a fun day of milestones hitting my 50,000 on the touchdown to Robert, Big Dog’s 400th catch on a touchdown, Davante’s 500th catch on a touchdown as well. Some fun milestones today and our 100th win against the Bears.”
