With Love, Packers Will Continue To Own the Bears

GREEN BAY, Wis. – With the Green Bay Packers coming off a surprise appearance in the NFC Championship Game in 2019, drafting a quarterback in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft seemed like an impossibility. Aaron Rodgers needed weapons, not a successor.

Instead, general manager Brian Gutekunst said drafting a quarterback was “always on the table” because of the importance of the position.

“It’s a quarterback, you know what I mean?” Gutekunst explained before that draft. “I think it’s such an important part of what makes this thing go.”

You know the rest of the story. Gutekunst traded up to select Jordan Love. After three years standing behind Rodgers, Love threw three touchdown passes to win his debut as the team’s starting quarterback on Sunday against the Chicago Bears.

The Bears selected Justin Fields in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft. In 2021, the Bears went 6-11 – 2-8 in games started by Fields and 4-3 in games started by Andy Dalton and Nick Foles. In 2022, the Bears went 3-14 – 3-12 in games started by Fields and 0-2 in games started by Trevor Siemian and Nathan Peterman.

By finishing last season with 10 consecutive losses, the Bears earned the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. Rather than drafting a quarterback, general manager Ryan Poles traded the selection to the Carolina Panthers. Chicago got a king’s ransom in return: the No. 9 pick and a second-round pick in this year’s draft, a first-round pick in 2024, a second-round pick in 2025 and premier receiver D.J. Moore.

All those assets could be the building blocks for resurrecting a franchise that’s had just one winning season over the last decade.

To make it happen, Poles must find a quarterback capable of making everything go, to borrow Gutekunst’s phrasing. That doesn’t seem to be Fields, who was terrible against Green Bay.

In 2021, Fields had the excuse of being a rookie. In 2022, he had the excuse of having arguably the worst receiver corps in the NFL.

In 2023, there are no such excuses. You could do worse than Moore, Darnell Mooney, Chase Claypool and tight end Cole Kmet as passing-game targets.

Without a quarterback, you’ve got no chance to win. From week to week, sure, but at least not big-picture winning. With Fields, the Bears have no chance to win the NFC North or make noise in the playoffs. And in the worst-case scenario for Bears fans who’ve grown weary of seeing their team beaten like a drum by their rivals to the north, they’ve got no chance of flipping their series against the Packers.

So, while it’s going to be back to the drawing board for the Bears, maybe it’s back to the future for the Packers.

In his first start in the rivalry and his second start overall, Love looked infinitely better than Fields. Fields gained a star receiver with Moore and Love lost a star receiver with Christian Watson inactive, and it didn’t matter in the least. Death, taxes and the Packers beating the Bears are the three sure things in life.

During his brilliant tenure in Green Bay, Rodgers went 24-5 against the Bears. If it was Love vs. Fields for the next 28 Sundays, the Packers might wind up 25-4. Heck, that might be understating the reality at the most important position in the sport.

To be sure, Love wasn’t great, no matter if he does lead the NFL in passer rating headed into Monday night’s Jets-Bills showdown that will feature quarterbacking titans Rodgers and Josh Allen. Love was 7-of-16 in the first half and 15-of-27 overall. Of his 245 passing yards, almost two-thirds came after the catch, by our tally. There really wasn’t a “holy crap” kind of throw, though his final touchdown pass couldn’t have been put in a better spot had Love ran over and handed it to Romeo Doubs.

But Love was good enough to win. So long as this was the starting point – so long as Love grows through experience and the rapport between young quarterback and young playmakers improves with time – Love will give the Packers a chance to win most weeks.

That’s all you can ask for as a team, even one like the Packers, that’s been blessed with three decades of quarterbacking greatness.

For the 62,000-plus fans filling Soldier Field on Sunday, it was a devastating outcome.

Bringing this around full circle, did Gutekunst set the franchise up for championship failure by drafting a quarterback rather than a playmaker in 2020? Or did he the franchise up for championship success by drafting the next great quarterback?

It’s obviously too soon to determine whether Gutekunst made the right decision at quarterback. What is certain is the Packers still have the right quarterback in the rivalry.

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Continuing with what we did in the preseason and following NFL Week 1 tradition, here are three overreactions from the #Packers' opening victory over the Bears.https://t.co/wy1BZeLbNV
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