Despite the loss of Aaron Rodgers, the Bears continued to struggle against the Packers.
The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers have played each other more often than any other two teams in NFL history, but the rivalry has deteriorated over the past 30 years, with the team playing its home games south of the Illinois-Wisconsin border having to endure a protracted test of pain tolerance. The Bears had just five victories over the Packers in the previous 31 games, two in the previous 19 games, and no victories in the previous eight games going into the new season.
Continue to refer to this as one of the greatest rivalries in sports while ignoring all recent evidence to the contrary in order to respect its rich history.
However, as the two franchises faced off to begin the 2023 season, Chicago thought it had solid grounds for optimism that the teams’ respective fortunes might finally turn around.
Since 1992, the Packers have started almost all of their games with two quarterbacks, both of whom are Hall of Fame candidates. Mercifully, that streak would end in Week 1 when Aaron Rodgers successfully pushed himself to the New York Jets, Jordan Love took over in his place, and the Packers experienced the same instability at the most crucial position in sports that had plagued Chicago for a century.
If the Bears were ever going to take the lead once more, it had to be when Green Bay was using a quarterback with only one career start in the NFL and a scant history of elite performance at any level.
Naturally, there was only one direction for the Bears to go: up.
When the last successful head coach of the franchise, Lovie Smith, led the Houston Texans to a comeback victory in Week 18, Chicago had lost its final 10 games of the previous season to finish 3-14, which turned out to be the worst record in football.
With Justin Fields ready to soar in his third season, the Bears, who held the first pick in the draft, didn’t need a quarterback.
The Bears instead made a trade for No. 9, gave Fields an actual No. D.J has a single wide receiver. Moore and chose to protect him with a right tackle.
After Fields’ record-breaking season as a running quarterback a year ago, it was believed that the Bears could put an end to the excuses and get a true sense of his ability as a passer with an improved offensive line and receiving group.
It turns out that hope can be very harmful, particularly if you have a soft spot for a team that has a history of being as utterly pitiful as the Bears have.
In a match that felt much more lopsided than that, the Packers defeated the Bears 38-20.
In order to leave little room for doubt regarding the future of the rivalry even without Rodgers, Green Bay dominated the trenches, converted third downs at an incredibly high rate, and outperformed Chicago in the passing game.
For the Bears, the game was a complete nightmare.
The coaching can be your first step.
In an apparent attempt to gain more yards by moving horizontally rather than vertically, the offense tried one stupid screen pass after another.
Love picked apart the defense’s hyper-conservative style of play as it failed to create any real pass rush and failed to force a turnover.
The biggest lesson learned, according to head coach Matt Eberflus, was Chicago’s lack of focus and preparation in every aspect of the game.
He called the contest a “learning experience.”.
Fields seemed destined to be the star of this game, whether it ended in a victory or a loss, but his team’s analysis was so thorough that Fields’ meager performance was reduced to the status of a footnote.
Fields was under constant pressure from the Packers all afternoon, and his newly improved offensive line was already exhibiting serious structural flaws.
Also ineffective were the new receivers: Moore finished with just two catches for 25 yards, and Chase Claypool only registered one drop in the box score. Fields busted the Packers for a 56-yard touchdown run a year ago, one of the most electrifying plays of his career.
He only managed 59 yards of total running on Sunday, failing to produce the crucial big play Chicago required in yet another successful team effort.
Fields didn’t have much of a chance to demonstrate any passing improvement, as the game plan called for almost no vertical shots and favored quick passing in the flats.
That is not the best way to use Fields’ skills, and it should come as no surprise that it failed completely.
This is something that anyone who has followed Fields since he first emerged as an elite talent from the Atlanta area could tell you.
The Packers may be playing quarterback in a new era, but they are still a purposeful organization.
The team plays a competent brand of football even with a new quarterback and hardly any healthy wide receivers because head coach Matt LaFleur has established himself as a shrewd leader and the offensive and defensive lines are consistently strong.
Green Bay always has a practical plan there, whereas the Bears aren’t even sure if they want to stay in Chicago. Success in professional sports starts at the top and trickles down.
This kind of setback causes someone to lose faith in the enterprise as a whole. How can anyone have confidence in Eberflus or his two coordinators after such a lethargic effort and poor play-calling?
Fields also has plenty of questions to answer going forward, but the dumb penalties, birdbrained schemes, and all-around ineptitude of everyone surrounding him makes you wonder how any QB would ever be successful.
Since every NFL loss can be felt viscerally until the next one starts, there have probably been worse Bears games.
It’s a sobering reminder that even when the players’ names change, the Bears’ ineptitude against the Packers never does to see the Bears get pummeled by Green Bay in this manner without Rodgers.