Well, at least the Packers are stinking it up!
An outsider might view that as cold comfort, but that’s not how most Bears fans, raised to hate anything Green Bay, gold and gap-toothed like Vince Lombardi, view life. They expected their team to be bad this season, but they expected the Packers to be very good because that’s what life beats them over the head with season after season.
Instead, the mighty Pack are 3-3.
Last week, joyous over a 27-10 victory over Green Bay, Jets rookie cornerback Sauce Gardner walked off Lambeau Field wearing a foam cheesehead hat he had received from a New York fan. Packers wide receiver Allen Lazard, who knows a desecration in progress when he sees one, knocked the hat off Gardner’s head. But the damage had been done, hadn’t it? Just because you get rid of a mole on the tip of your nose doesn’t mean it was never there. Cameras exist for forensic evidence.
I don’t know if the Packers are in disarray because I don’t know if you can be in disarray when you have someone as talented as Aaron Rodgers on the roster. But the quarterback spent part of training camp publicly demanding a lot from some very inexperienced wide receivers, complained that a teammate shouldn’t be complaining about the difficulties of travel to London after a Week 5 loss to the Giants and probably is unhappy he has that big bull’s-eye on his back when everybody else on the team has the blahs, too. But that sort of scrutiny can happen when you don’t go to OTAs, date someone who took to social media to notify the world she is not a witch and talk about your use of psychedelics.
The Bears are 2-4, and the only drama is whether quarterback Justin Fields is any good and whether he’ll survive the weekly beatings he’s taking.
Your typical Bears fan would admit, not even under duress, that they would swap quarterbacks with the Packers in the time it takes to say “Sid Luckman.’’
But short of that, they’ll take this, the Packers adrift early in the season. Green Bay hasn’t run the ball as much as it should, and it doesn’t take the ball away as much as it should. Rodgers isn’t playing as well as he should be.
It’s strange to write all of that so flippantly. It’s the kind of things that typically happen to the Bears, not the Packers.
He clearly misses Davante Adams, who bolted for Las Vegas in the offseason. But Rodgers signed up for this when he decided to stay with his team. Bears fans would never feel sorry for a Packers quarterback, but surely not for this one, who has been the sopping wet wool sock in Chicago’s shoe for too long. I won’t list his accomplishments over the Bears in a 17-year career. I won’t ruin your day, year, life, etc.
I would suggest to Bears fans that they enjoy this for now because the odds are that Rodgers will find a way based on, you know, his always finding a way. He’s still the two-time reigning NFL most valuable player.
The Bears? Would anyone with their self-respect on the line predict that Fields is going to be great and that the Bears are going to shed themselves of the Super Bowl millstone that has been around their neck since the 1985 Bears?
I can’t. Fields looks as far away from Rodgers as a cat does from a Siberian tiger.
But, as I said, embrace the moment. Just know that this isn’t a math problem to live by: The Bears stink + the Packers stink = Ain’t life grand? At some point, the sad football team from Chicago will have to figure out a way to get past the Packers. If a White Sox fan says it’s a great day when his team wins and the Cubs lose, it says more about tribalism and a city’s deep-seated baseball rivalry than it does about real competition. The Cubs and Sox are in different leagues. Sure, there’s interleague play, but it doesn’t have much excitement attached to it anymore. If they met in the World Series, then you’d see passion and meaning.
But the Bears and Packers play twice a year in games that matter very, very much to the two fan bases. The problem with the rivalry is that it hasn’t been a rivalry for the last 30 years. Green Bay loves the Bears like they love food. The Bears seem to be an unlimited source of all the necessary daily nutrition.
Bears fans still think it’s a rivalry. It’s not. A 3-3 Green Bay record will suffice for now. But, geez, Bears, how about winning a game? Maybe the one in New England on Monday?
