CHICAGO — It’s not the cheese grater foam hats that have suddenly become a new staple of the Chicago Bears’ wardrobe. It’s not the Bears’ leaders swiping back at Green Bay Packers players for saying they would have “chosen” Saturday’s playoff game, just for the chance to end Chicago’s season. It’s not even the postgame locker room speech of Bears head coach Ben Johnson, who made sure to scream “F*** the Packers” in a snippet that was ultimately posted on Chicago’s social media channels.
It’s not the words. It’s not the payback taunts. It’s the competitive arrogance that runs under all of it.
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That’s what really makes it feel like these Bears are changing in a meaningful way.
You saw it late in the fourth quarter Saturday on the Packers’ 25-yard line, on a first-and-10 play with 1:48 left. Trailing 27-24 but with the Packers on their heels, Johnson called a play into quarterback Caleb Williams that Chicago had been practicing and patiently saving for nearly a month. Having set the table earlier in the game with a screen to the flat out of the same alignment, the Bears suddenly felt the Green Bay defense on tilt. A mistake was at hand.
The ball snapped. Williams pump-faked another screen to wideout Luther Burden III in the flat. And Packers cornerback Carrington Valentine bit hard, believing that his responsibility — Bears wide receiver DJ Moore — was about to set up a block on the play. Rather than stopping and planting himself in front of Burden to throw a block, Moore streaked past Valentine down the sideline.
Who’s next? Caleb Williams and Chicago are off to the divisional round after mounting the greatest comeback in Bears postseason history. It was Chicago’s first playoff victory since the 2010 season. (Photo by Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images)
(Todd Rosenberg via Getty Images)
Johnson saw it in a microsecond. His quarterback saw it faster than that, halfway into his throwing motion by the time Valentine understood what had just happened. Now all that mattered was Williams doing the one thing that had frustratingly eluded him at various times in his brief NFL career: Hitting the easiest of easy. A no-contact route that had Moore looking like a man running down Lake Shore Drive in a one-man marathon. The kind of thing you practice for a month and then deploy when your opponent has professed wanting to end you in the postseason.
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The kind of thing that is Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams and the fourth quarter comebacks that have become these Chicago Bears. The competitiveness to believe you can do it. The arrogance to execute it. And the 25-yard touchdown portrait that unfolds, propelling Chicago past an opponent in a comeback during the game’s final two minutes of regulation or overtime for the seventh time this season — and the second time against these Packers — to a 31-27 wild-card win at Soldier Field.
Williams later called it the “perfect play call.”
“When the lights are bright, he’s brighter than them lights out there today,” Moore said of Williams, whose final pass completed a stat line of 24-of-48 for 361 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.
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And Williams? He punctuated it with something a little more personal.
“They wanted us,” he said. “That’s what I heard. They wanted it and they got it.”
Yes, the Packers did. After a week when cornerback Keisean Nixon and wideout Christian Watson told media this was the playoff game they wanted. A get-even opportunity after Moore, Williams and the Bears had sniped the Packers, 22-16, in overtime in Week 16, with a walk-off 46-yard touchdown. It was a moment that hurt Green Bay and emboldened Chicago, which had all but lost that game in regulation but recovered an onside kick and tied the game in the final minutes of regulation with a 10-point fourth quarter.
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That moment was dwarfed Saturday, with the Bears coming back from a 21-3 halftime deficit and scoring an absurd 25 points in the fourth quarter to send Green Bay spiraling into the offseason. The Packers lost their final four games of the regular season and then their fifth straight Saturday, raising questions about whether Matt LaFleur — who has one year left on his contract — might become the ninth NFL head coach fired this season.
Twice, LaFleur was asked about his future in Green Bay. Twice he declined to talk about it.
Instead, he spoke about his team looking “disheveled” in the second half, struggling to deal with Bears pressure on quarterback Jordan Love in the third and fourth quarters. Love threw three of his four TD passes in the first half and went 9-of-15 passing for 139 yards as Green Bay raced to a 21-3 lead at halftime. In the second half, he completed only 15 of 31 attempts.
Asked if there was a lack of composure on the team, he called it “a great question.” Asked about the team’s maturity, he called it “a great question.”
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“Certainly it’s my job to find the answers to those,” LaFleur said.
In arguably the NFL’s greatest historic rivalry, this is what the Bears have suddenly become. A team that the Packers not only have to think about, but actually wanted to get even with in these playoffs. A franchise that has a head coach in Johnson who began his tenure by declaring how much he liked to beat Green Bay when he was the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, then punctuated his latest chapter by pumping battery acid into the veins of the rivalry with a “F*** the Packers” postgame speech.
As Johnson put it later, “There was probably a little bit more noise coming out of their building up north to start the week, which we heard loud and clear — players and coaches alike. So this one meant something to us.”
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If it meant something to Johnson, it meant everything to the Bears fan base, which had Soldier Field on its feet and quaking for virtually the entire fourth quarter, reaching a new feverish pitch with every missed field goal, missed receiver and missed defensive assignment. They stayed a while after the victory, too, serenading Johnson, Williams, Moore and any Bears player within earshot.
All with the belief that this is a ride that’s real and lasting and really just starting. Filled with the belief that when it’s fourth-and-8 and the Bears are down 27-16 late in the fourth quarter, Williams can roll to his left and evade fingernails a of a defender and complete an arcing downfield pass to wideout Rome Odunze that he has no business or body mechanics throwing. That this roster is young and growing and getting better with its quarterback, whether it’s Burden or running back Kyle Monangai, or a still-finding-his-way Odunze. Or maybe the best of all the finds — rookie Colston Loveland who looks like he could eventually be a league-shaper at the tight end spot. He finished with a career-high 137 receiving yards on eight receptions, including a critical 2-point conversion grab that brought the Bears within a 27-24 deficit with 4:18 remaining in the ballgame.
All of these players put their fingerprints on Saturday night. And all of them planted that imprint with an arrogance that smacks of how these Packers used to carry themselves in this rivalry. A kind of Aaron Rodgers swagger that suggests ownership. That belonged to Green Bay before, but the balance of power felt like it shifted Saturday night.
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Asked what message he wanted Saturday night to convey, Williams spoke with definitive clarity.
“We’re here,” he said. “And I’m gonna be here for a while, [that] is my plan. I’m gonna be here with coach, win a bunch of games and be in these moments and come out victorious. That’s the mindset for right now, this year. That’s also the mindset of the future.”
If there’s a space where being competitive and being arrogant finds balance, this is what it looks like. And the Chicago Bears aren’t afraid to talk it — and play it.