If the Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Bears on Sunday, they will clinch a spot in the NFL playoffs with the youngest team in the league and a first-year starting quarterback.
The Packers began the season with a 2-5 record, and went winless in the month of October. Since November, Green Bay has won six of its last nine games, and an offense that struggled to score early this season is coming off back-to-back 30-plus point performances.
But Green Bay faces a Chicago team that’s also much improved from the team the Packers beat 38-20 in the first week of the season. The Bears have held teams to 20 points or less in each of the last five games, and their defense leads the league in interceptions.
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Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said Wednesday the Bears were as improved as any team in the league, especially on the defensive side of the ball.
“It is a challenge because there’s just not a lot of holes in their defense,” LaFleur said. “They do a really good job of limiting explosive gains and you have to earn everything you get.”
It won’t be the first time the Packers and Bears have met in the final week of the season with playoff implications. In both 2010 and 2013, Green Bay defeated Chicago to punch its ticket to the postseason.
Sunday marks the 208th game in the NFL’s oldest rivalry, and could prove to be one of the more meaningful matchups in the last decade. LaFleur said Thursday the Packers have put themselves in a position where they have their “backs against the wall” and the playoffs at stake.
“I’m excited for our guys to go out and to be in our home stadium with that playoff-type vibe,” he said.
Jordan Love’s development
One of the keys to the Packers resurgence is the development of quarterback Jordan Love. In the first two months of the season, Love threw for 11 touchdowns and eight interceptions. Since November, he’s thrown 19 touchdown passes and just three interceptions.
And he’s done it with multiple skill position players in and out of the lineup. Veteran running back Aaron Jones missed six games this season due to hamstring and knee injuries, wide receiver Christian Watson missed seven games with hamstring injuries and rookie tight end Luke Musgrave has been out since mid-November with a lacerated kidney.
LaFleur told reporters after last week’s game that he credits Love’s development to his work ethic, as well as the time he’s put in with quarterbacks coach Tom Clements, who also mentored Aaron Rodgers.
“The biggest difference is just … the trust that I have in him for when it’s not the right look to go out there and not make a bad play worse or get us out of a bad play,” LaFleur said of his quarterback.
Love is coming off an NFC Offensive Player of the Week performance against the Vikings, in which he threw three touchdowns and ran for another. He currently has the third-most touchdown passes in the NFL this season.
On Wednesday, Love said the players around him are the reason the Packers offense has been productive despite a rotating cast of pass catchers.
“It’s a credit to everybody around me stepping up making plays when guys are hurt,” he said. “Obviously, the production hasn’t fell off with guys being out.”
Second-year wide receivers Christian Watson and Bo Melton told reporters this week that Love invites offensive players to his house each week to watch film and eat dinner together as a way of building chemistry.
“We come over to his house on Mondays, we eat (and) we go over film before the week starts,” said Melton, who came off the practice squad last week to catch six passes for over 100 yards and a touchdown. “I think just the bond of staying connected with him, that’s big as a wide receiver.”
Win and in
With a win on Sunday, Love has the opportunity to do something that neither Rodgers nor Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre did in their first years starting: lead the Packers to the playoffs.
“You play for these moments, these opportunities to play in competitive games,” Love said Wednesday. “You want to be playing these games to have a chance to go to the playoffs.”
The Packers were in a similar position heading into the final week of the regular season last year. They needed to defeat the Detroit Lions to secure a spot in the playoffs, but ended up losing 20-16.
LaFleur said Wednesday coaches may “take a few nuggets” from lessons learned in last year’s week 18 loss, but also said it’s a different Packers team this year.
“There’s a different vibe around here. There’s a different mindset,” he said. “We gotta go attack. That’s the bottom line. We’ve got to go and play like we have been the last few weeks.”
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