Sportsnaut
The Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears split their rivalry series in the regular season, setting the stage for a must-see rubber match at Soldier Field in the Wild Card Round on Saturday Night. What seemed like a blowout in the first half turned into a playoff classic, or a late-game collapse depending on how you look at it.
Let’s dive into our winners and losers from the Packers vs. Bears game, with Chicago winning at home and knocking out its hated rival with a little embarrassment to end Green Bay’s season.
It’s almost as if the Bears put themselves in a massive hole, to give the Packers hope, only for Caleb Williams to come in and crush it in clutch time. Williams was largely bad for the first three quarters of this game, wildly missing open receivers and turning it over twice. The fourth quarter came and he flipped a switch. It really came down to that insane throw on 4th-and-8 with Chicago down by 11, with Williams rolling out and just flicking his wrist right before getting taken down by a shoe-string tackle and dropping it in the bucket for a conversion. It lit up Soldier Field and really got WIlliams’ swagger going, as demonstrated by another fourth-quarter comeback against the Packers.
The Packers’ special-teams unit always finds a way to haunt them. It seemed minor at the time when Brandon McManus missed a 55-yard field goal at halftime but it certainly proved consequential given the club’s second-half implosion. McManus had a small chance at redemption later on with an extra-point attempt that would’ve made it a 12-point game. Instead, he inexplicably missed another kink and Chicago promptly marched down field for a touchdown and two-point conversion to make it a three-point game. Green Bay gave him a shot at redemption with a 44-yard field goal that would’ve forced the Bears to score a touchdown to win. McManus missed a again, single-handedly taking 7 points off the board for the Packers tonight. Just as special-team woes proved costly in the team’s last trip to Soldier Field, it set the team back again on Saturday night.
For Green Bay to have any shot at winning on Saturday night at Soldier Field, it needed an outstanding performance from Jordan Love. That’s exactly what he delivered in the first half. With Chicago having no pass rush to speak of, Love went 9-for-12 with 139 passing yards (11.6 yards per attempt) and three passing touchdowns. In the process, he joined Lynn Dickey as the only players in Packers history to record three first-half touchdown passes in a playoff game. Things got ugly for Green Bay’s offense in the second half, but Love and the receiving corps overcame bad play-calling, a defensive collapse and LaFleur to at least have a shot at the victory.
Loser: Chicago Bears’ Pass Rush in...
