Acme Packing Company
The Green Bay Packers botched the NFC Championship against the Seattle Seahawks almost 11 years ago. Saturday’s overtime loss to the Chicago Bears felt a lot like that.
A dramatic comeback by the Bears ended with Caleb Williams finding DJ Moore for a game-winning 46-yard touchdown to retain their first-place spot in the NFC North, while knocking the Packers down to 9-5-1 with their playoff hopes still hanging in the balance.
Williams made some great plays near the end, but in reality, it was the Packers that beat themselves.
Matt LaFleur and the coaching staff deserve credit for keeping the ship upright with Jordan Love exiting due to a concussion and Malik Willis stepping in for him, but the self-inflicted wounds kept piling throughout the game, starting with the team’s red zone inefficiencies.
The Packers went 0-for-5 on their red zone trips, scoring just nine points on three field goals. The other two drives were just as disastrous, with Love missing Christian Watson on fourth down near the goal line on the opening drive, and Josh Jacobs fumbling at the four-yard line after a 62-yard drive nearly gave Green Bay a possession lead.
It even looked like the Packers were still going to steal a win after the Bears struggled with their fire drill field goal operation, failing to get the kickoff before the two-minute warning. Instead, the Bears managed to recover an onside kick, sending the entire game into a tailspin.
A facemask on 3rd and 20 from Warren Brinson cost the Packers a chance at keeping a possession lead deep into the fourth quarter. Romeo Doubs muffed the onside recovery and gave Chicago possession. Keisean Nixon appeared to lose his coverage responsibilities to leave an undrafted rookie, Jahdae Walker, wide open in the back of the end zone to force overtime. Malik Willis and Sean Rhyan botched an exchange on a fourth-down attempt in overtime to give the Bears the ball to win the game.
All of it had to happen for Chicago to pull off a comeback that Bears fans will be talking about for generations, because frankly, they haven’t had a lot to talk about in this rivalry for the last couple of decades.
Maybe this game signals a shifting of the tides in the historic rivalry. Or maybe it was an incredible string of events that led to the win slipping away from Green Bay.
Either way, the Packers beat themselves, and likely cost themselves a shot at their first NFC North title since 2021.
