Packer Central

Three Reasons Why Packers Will Lose to Bears Today

The Green Bay Packers are huge favorites for Sunday’s Week 18 game against the Chicago Bears. Here are three reasons why it could be a difficult day at Lambeau Field.

Bill Huber

Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love is sacked by the Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field last season.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love is sacked by the Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field last season. / Tork Mason-Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers should beat the Chicago Bears on Sunday. They have won 11 consecutive games in the series and the Bears have lost 10 in a row overall.

However, it’s the NFL, and funny things happen. The Cowboys upset the Commanders as 10.5-point underdogs on Thanksgiving. The lowly Browns, who were crushed by the Ravens on Saturday, beat Baltimore as nine-point underdogs in October.

Here are three reasons why the Bears, who were 10-point underdogs at BetMGM as of Saturday evening, could pull off the upset.

1. The Bears’ Pass Rush

The Bears are a respectable 15th in sack percentage. There’s more to rushing the passer than sacking the quarterback, though. According to SportRadar, the Bears are ninth in pressure percentage.

Packers quarterback Jordan Love has not been good enough against pressure. Of 34 qualifying quarterbacks, Love is 27th with a 59.5 passer rating and 31st with a completion rate of 43.2 percent when under pressure, according to Next Gen Stats. From a clean pocket, his passer rating is 112.5 – a whopping 53.0-point difference.

When pressured last week by the Vikings, Love was 4-of-8 passing for 41 yards and was sacked three times. That’s a total of 23 net yards on 11 under-pressure dropbacks.

“I think the lesson I learned in college, a coach told me that there’s always feelings right after the game, (but) it’s never as good as you think it is and it’s never as bad as you think it is,” Love said on Wednesday. “So, you always have feelings. Especially coming off a loss, those things get elevated.

“There’s definitely a lot of things I want to clean up. Accuracy, I think my footwork got a little sloppy early on and some the things I cleaned up later. You always want to go out there and put your best foot forward and, sometimes, it’s just not there. But it’s always that next play, trying to figure out how to finish the game the right way and things like that.”

The Bears, who are a decent 14th in opponent passer rating, are feeling good after holding the Seahawks to just six points and 143 net passing yards last week.

“It was a great snapshot of what we can be when our front four, when they're generating pressure and they're forcing the quarterback off schedule, off his timing,” Bears defensive coordinator Eric Washington told reporters at Halas Hall this week. “We've got to do that.”

2. Turnovers

The Bears will need something good to happen to give them reason to believe. Turnovers are just the ticket, and the Bears are more than capable of collecting a couple takeaways.

Chicago is ninth in the league at plus-8 in turnovers. They are 11th with 22 takeaways – 18th with 11 interceptions and fifth with 11 fumble recoveries.

For the Packers, Jordan Love hasn’t thrown an interception since the victory at Chicago in Week 11. That’s 156 passing attempts during the past six games.

“The accuracy is really there,” Bears defensive coordinator Eric Washington said. “He's not missing a lot of targets. He knows where he wants to go with the football. He's diagnosing coverages. He's going to his secondary targets and he's really taking care of the football.”

However, the fumbles are noteworthy. Josh Jacobs has fumbled in two of the past three games, and cold-weather games mean slick footballs and the potential of game-changing fumbles.

However, maybe none of this will matter. Yes, the Bears are plus-8 in turnovers. And yet, they’re 4-12. No team has won four games while at least plus-8 since 2013, according to Stathead.

3. Don’t Forget Week 11

The standings suggest there’s an enormous gulf between these teams. However, the Packers needed a blocked field goal to beat the Bears 20-19 in Week 11. They also needed 150 receiving yards by Christian Watson, including a 60-yarder to set up the decisive touchdown. Watson is questionable with a knee injury.

So, Green Bay needed good fortune to beat the Bears even while coming off its bye.

That makes this noteworthy:

Last week, the Vikings had a one-day rest advantage over the Packers, who were coming off a Monday night game. This week, the Bears have a three-day rest advantage as they are coming off their Thursday night loss to Seattle.

This time of year, when bodies are worn down and practice time is slashed, a few extra days can be a big deal. The Packers, for instance, didn’t practice on Wednesday.

One more intangible works in the Bears’ favor: They have nothing to lose.

The Bears can cut it loose on Sunday. They can empty the playbook and take some chances in hopes of finally beating the rival Packers. Chances are, interim coach Thomas Brown is not going to get the full-time gig. So, why not throw caution to the wind in hopes of being the coach who finally beat the Packers?

It’s cliché, but the Bears need to start fast. Doing so would provide some motivation on a cold and irrelevant-to-them Sunday. Unfortunately for them, they are last in the NFL in first-quarter scoring.

Moreover, the Packers should be hungry after losing to Minnesota last week in an effort to avoid a two-game losing streak heading into the playoffs.

“It left a little bit of I’d say a sour taste,” coach Matt LaFleur said this week. “It’s just not the way you want to go into it. I think that sometimes can be a little overblown, but you’d like to put your best foot forward every time you go out on the field.

“No matter who you’re playing, what the circumstances are, you always want to win the game. You feel like you get a little bit of momentum from that. But bottom line, win, lose or draw, you’ve got to get yourself ready to play. That’s for every game in this league. You’ve got to be able to learn from the game and flip the script and get on to the next team.”

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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.