Deal with it, Green Bay: The Bears have turned the tables on the Packers at last (or have they?)

As the Bears and Packers warmed up for their NFL-record 213th game against each other, this one in the wild-card playoffs at Soldier Field, it only seemed as though the Packers had won something like, oh, 200 of the previous 212.

In fact, that would be giving them too much credit by almost double. The victory tally was Packers 109, Bears 97, with six ties — fairly close, taken over the long arc of rivalry history.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Over the last three-plus decades, the rivalry has been as evenly matched as a lone poppy-seed bun against a barrel of bratwurst. Any sentient Bears watcher has the green-and-gold-tinged bruises to prove it.

Still, the fans in navy blue and orange flocked eagerly to the frigid lakefront Saturday, full of hope, excitement and swaggering confidence.

Because the 2025 season was — is — going to change everything.

You know, maybe.

Win or lose Saturday night, the sense of a change of course in a purportedly unsurpassed pro football rivalry was going to linger. Yes, on one hand, it could easily be argued that a “rivalry” in which one side had lost 50 times in 65 tries entering this game wasn’t much of a rivalry at all. But the Bears have so much going for them these days, it’s nearly impossible not to get swept up in the notion that an era of payback is in order.

The Bears have Caleb Williams, a 24-year-old quarterback with the pure talent of a potential superstar. They have Ben Johnson, a 39-year-old coach who more than lived up to the hype in his debut season. They have Ryan Poles, a 40-year-old general manager who has had what even a skeptic would have to agree was an impressive couple of years. They have a rookie class worth bragging about and an NFC North title that one certainly would like to think was no fluke. The Bears should be in fine stead for a while.

And as for what the Packers have, well, honestly, who cares? See the paragraph above.

“Unbelievable,” Packers radio play-by-play man Wayne Larrivee said on air three weeks ago as the Bears celebrated a walk-off touchdown in overtime to push their rivals to the brink of elimination in the fight for the division crown.

Yeah, well, get used to it, pal.

Unless, that is, we’ve been duped again.

A tip of the helmet to you if you knew a cautionary tale was coming. Not everyone is gullible around here.

Fifteen years ago, though, none of us would have believed the Bears’ futility against the Packers was only getting started. Or re-started, more like.

If you’re reading a newspaper column in 2026, there’s no question you’re old enough to remember the last time the Bears and Packers ran into each other in a playoff game. It was 2011, the NFC Championship Game, and though the Packers were slight favorites at Soldier Field — they had Aaron Rodgers, after all — the Bears were division champs and had long since stopped the bleeding against their rivals.

Going into that game, the Bears had actually won eight of the last 14 against the Packers, including a 6-2 stretch from 2005 to 2008. The success had largely erased the pain associated with the Bears’ 3-19 slog — essentially known as the Brett Favre era — before that.

There wasn’t much fear around here of that particular Green Bay invasion, though all recognized it was a huge game.

“Bigger than the 2006, 1988 and 1985 NFC Championship Games,” the Sun-Times’ Mark Potash wrote going in. “Bigger than the 1963 showdown with the Packers at Wrigley Field. Maybe even bigger, some would argue, than the 1963 championship game against the New York Giants. It might be the biggest football game ever in Chicago.”

During the fourth quarter of a win against the Seahawks in the divisional round, fans at Soldier Field had chanted, “Green Bay sucks!” The Sun-Times soon piled on.

“The ‘city’ of Green Bay regards the city of Chicago in much the same way Canada regards the United States,” columnist Richard Roeper wrote. “One side cares way more about the perceived connection than the other.”

Even if the Bears lost, Roeper boasted, Chicago sports fans would still have it all: the Blackhawks skating to defend the Stanley Cup, the Bulls rocking behind MVP candidate Derrick Rose, the White Sox getting ready for spring training with one of the highest payrolls in the major leagues.

Meanwhile, “If the Packers lose on Sunday, what do their fans do, turn their attention to [the] Bucks and Brewers?”

Oh, boy.

If only we knew how all that would turn out. Or maybe it was better we didn’t.

The Packers won that game 21-14. Then they won 24 of the next 27 meetings against the Bears.

Don’t think something like that could happen again?

You sure about that?

Nah, it couldn’t. It won’t.

You know, maybe.