Green Bay QB’s record against Chicago now at 22-5.
Well, we’ve won a few in a row now. I love this rivalry. It’s been a lot of fun over the years.
-Aaron Rodgers
After the game, Rodgers told Bears QB Justin Fields, “Enjoy this. It’s a special rivalry. Unlike any other in our game.” He spoke to the media, “you know, we played a complete game today. We needed the drive late in the fourth and we came out on top. It starts off slow sometimes, we get rolling. Defense had some timely stops. We put a drive together. Kind of withstood the first wave of energy and proud of the way we finished the last three quarters.”
Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur appeared relieved to leave the state of Illinois with the 24-14 victory. “It was a tough, gritty win out there,” he said.” You know, really proud of our group to overcome a lot of injuries. This is a really quality football team, a playoff caliber team in the Chicago Bears. And it’s always tough when you go into somebody else’s home, you know, division rival. And it wasn’t pretty early. And that’s a credit to the Bears. I mean, that is a good football team. That’s the best defense we’ve seen. And we had to grind it out. And luckily our defense kept us in it early on.
Chicago coach Matt Nagy was naturally disappointed in his team inability to defeat their rival. He said, “to not pull this out and lose, that hurts. Division game. Just like we talk about when we win, same things when you lose. You got to understand why. You go into this game and go into halftime 10-7 and you want to worst case scenario come out 10 to 10 at half, and then, you know, having it there at the end where we’re able to have a two score game, score a touchdown, make it a three-point game, and then they go down and score, I think that is stuff that we got to learn from.”
Rodgers: “Two of the most important plays in the game were, obviously, on that last drive where we had to put it away. I thought Matt had a nice call on second and 10 with the pass to (Allen) Lazard, who had a nice catch in traffic. And then third down, the slight adjustment to Davante (Adams), and I made, to set us up in the red zone was really important.”
Justin Fields took some of the heat for the loss. “I think I should have played better, he said. “I didn’t play as well as I wanted to. I think the drive before the second half ended I think we should have got points right there. That’s on me. I mean, I just got to play better for my teammates. We were doing good things on offense, so, again, I’ll take the blame, I’ll take the credit for that right there, I mean, because unfortunately I just didn’t play how I needed to play for us to get the win.”
Nagy was asked about Rodgers. “He won a lot of games. He does a lot of good things. He dictates how things go at the line of scrimmage. So he puts those guys in good situations, but we know that. We have obviously faced him a lot, we see where he is at, and you got to give him credit for that. He’s a hell of a quarterback and he’s been doing this for a long time.”
Rodgers’ take on his success at Soldier Field against the Bears is, “I do feel like there’s a confidence that I take in this place because the wins we’ve had. I mean, I’ve outlasted most of the guys around here. So I’ve played here, you know, so many times and I’ve started here. So I do feel very confident, you know, with what we’ve accomplished here over the years, some big wins, some big games. But it’s always the same kind of game. It always starts kind of slow and very physical. And it just comes down to a couple of plays.”
More Rodgers: “If we have to win like this, it’s great. We got to get healthy, though. We’re just a little banged up. So it’s nice to be five and one and be banged up and won five in a row, but we got to get healthy as we move forward. It’s an important stretch coming up.”
Nagy: That’s a good offense that we played, well-coached. Got a great quarterback. So that’s a challenge. So what you do is you look at where you went wrong. The effort by our guys is always there. That’s never changed. I thought Coach Desai and the rest of the coaches have coached them well and done a good job. Again, you figure out why. You look at each other, you say, Okay, let’s pick the pieces up and get back at it.
It does not take a PhD to figure out that the Bears simply aren’t as good a team as the Packers. Chicago may have some better talent on the defensive side of the ball, but on offense, they can not match up with Green Bay in any offensive category. Not just at quarterback, but at running back and wide receiver. Adams is a top three WR statistically in the NFL. Darnell Mooney, the best Bears pass catcher, barely cracks the top fifty. As a team Chicago is 26th in rushing yards and dead last in passing yards. Maybe the Bears have the edge at kicker, but that really is special teams.
The Bears travel to Tampa next Sunday for an afternoon marquee matchup with Tom Brady.