Packer Central

Packers Huge Favorites Against Bears; What About Playoffs vs. Eagles?

The Green Bay Packers are huge favorites for Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears. Here’s the line for a potential wild-card game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Bill Huber

Josh Jacobs tallied 134 total yards and ran for a touchdown in the Packers' victory over the Bears.
Josh Jacobs tallied 134 total yards and ran for a touchdown in the Packers' victory over the Bears. / Mark Hoffman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers are huge favorites for Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears.

No surprise there.

But what about for a hypothetical playoff game at the Philadelphia Eagles?

At FanDuel Sportsbook, the Eagles are three-point favorites for a potential wild-card game against the Packers. The over/under is 47.5.

The Eagles beat the Packers 34-29 in Brazil to start the season.

With nothing to play for this week against the New York Giants, the Eagles will be well-rested for the rematch against Green Bay. Coach Nick Sirianni announced on Wednesday that, “We’re going to be resting some guys” for Sunday’s game in New York.

“There are going to be some guys that are resting,” he said. “There are going to be some guys that are in reserve roles. You can’t obviously rest everybody with the roster. That's our plan moving forward.”

The list will include running back Saquon Barkley, who had a chance to set the NFL’s single-season rushing record. He has an NFL-high 378 touches this season.

“Obviously a very special record that’s been standing for a very long time (40 years) by a great player,” Sirianni said. “It’s a team record that everybody’s involved in, so you weigh in all those things but at the end of the day you just try to do what’s best for the team.”

Barkley scored three touchdowns against the Packers in Week 1.

Quarterback Jalen Hurts (concussion) is expected to miss this week’s game, as well.

The Eagles, a top Super Bowl contender, are locked into the No. 2 seed. Last week’s loss at Minnesota pushed Green Bay down to No. 7. To move up to No. 6 would require the Packers beating the Bears and Mike McCarthy’s Cowboys upsetting the Commanders in Dallas.

The Commanders are 4.5-point favorites.

“Right now, our focus, obviously, is on Chicago,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said on Monday. “We) cleaned up everything from this last game, and there was a lot to clean up. Honestly, I didn’t feel like it was to our standard, and you got to give them credit. I mean, that’s a good football team, but I thought there was a lot of things within our own control in terms of playing with fundamentals and discipline that we did not do a very good job of.

“And that was disappointing. It just was sloppy football.”

For the finale against the Bears, the Packers are 10.5-point favorites at FanDuel, 10-point favorites at BetMGM and 10-point favorites at DraftKings. Using FanDuel’s odds, that’s the third-largest spread of the week behind the Baltimore Ravens as 17.5-point favorites against the Cleveland Browns and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as 13.5-point favorites against New Orleans Saints.

In Packers-Bears history, that 10.5-point spread is tied for Green Bay’s biggest since the turn of the century. The Packers were 13-point favorites in 2011 and 11.5-point favorites in 2021.

In the LaFleur era, that’s the eighth-largest spread overall. The Packers closed as 14-point favorites against the Saints on Dec. 23 and won 34-0.

LaFleur is 11-0 straight up as a favorite of more than eight points but is 5-6 against the spread.

The Bears have lost 10 consecutive games; they started 4-2 but are 0-10 since their bye. This is Chicago’s largest underdog status of the season; it was a 9.5-point spread for its 23-20 loss on Thanksgiving at the Lions.

The last time the Bears were a larger underdog was with a 13-point spread against Kansas City last season.

Since the start of the 2019 season, Chicago is 1-19 as an underdog of seven-plus points.

It’s worth noting Chicago has a three-day rest advantage following a Thursday loss against Seattle.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.