How The Chicago Bears Are Now Causing Packer On Packer Violence
The Green Bay Packers had been living in a golden age of football for the past 30 years. On the shoulders of two all-time great quarterbacks, they regularly won the division, reached three Super Bowls, and won two. Most importantly, they’d seized total control of the rivalry with the Chicago Bears. From 1992 through 2023, Green Bay was an astonishing 49-15 against their arch nemesis. That included a four-year stretch under Matt Lafleur, where they swept the season series. The team was untouchable.
It was easy for fans to sit back and simply state that the rivalry no longer existed. This is how it would always be. The Bears still sucked and would suck forevermore. Then something shifted in 2024. Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams led a last-second comeback to beat the Packers at Lambeau Field, ruining their chances at a higher seed in the playoffs and forcing them to face the eventual champion Philadelphia Eagles on the road. It also ended their streak of dominance.
Try as they might to shrug it off, there was a creeping dread up north. With the winter storms came the arrival of Ben Johnson, an offensive wunderkind from Detroit, to become the Bears’ new head coach. Still, the Packers managed to reassert themselves with a big win at home in the first matchup of 2025. Then everything imploded. First, they fell in overtime at Soldier Field after holding a 10-point 4th quarter lead. A few weeks later in the playoffs, they coughed up a 21-3 lead to lose 31-27. All of Wisconsin was left stunned.
How had their grip broken so suddenly?
The Chicago Bears now seem to have caused infighting.
Frustration has been growing in Green Bay. Some players aren’t overly happy with LaFleur because of the late-game collapses. Guys seem more interested in getting their shots in against the Bears to prove their toughness than in winning the games. Now it has spread to generation-on-generation violence. Recently, several current and former Packers attended a charity event at a local high school. Team legend Randall Cobb was asked the burning question. What happened in that playoff loss? Cobb, rather than assure the fan that reclaiming rivalry dominance was coming, decided to excuse himself from the discussion and pass it to Evan Williams, the current safety on the team that lost that game.
So much for franchise unity.
That is pretty brutal on Cobb’s part. While what he said is technically true, he didn’t have to do Williams like that. The fact is, he had a classic “back in my day” moment. Sure, he enjoyed tremendous success against the Chicago Bears in his career. Everybody remembers the 4th-and-8 bomb in 2013 that shattered the team’s dreams and sent them into a death spiral that took four years to climb out of. However, let’s be honest. That success was hardly because of Cobb. He enjoyed two big advantages.
- A Hall of Fame quarterback in his prime
- Facing a Bears team with inferior coaching and quarterback play
It’s easy to dominate a rivalry when that is the case. Go see what Tom Brady did to the Buffalo Bills during most of his career. Cobb never had to deal with what Williams does. He never faced Ben Johnson or Caleb Williams. Needing to only score 20 points a game to win is pretty easy. Maybe that is why the Packers never reached a Super Bowl with him on the team. They felt that the approach was good enough to beat most teams. It was very much not.