The signs have been there since Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson’s introductory news conference nearly a year ago, when he fired the verbal shot heard ‘round the NFL.
“I kind of enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year,” the former Detroit Lions assistant coach said, referring to the Green Bay Packers coach.
Every new Bears coach comes in saying the right words — “… and we’re gonna beat the Packers!” — like a Chicago politician promising patronage reform, but this has morphed into something different.
There have been exchanges of bulletin-board barbs that coaches and players typically avoid.
Players briefly skirmished at midfield before Saturday’s wild-card playoff game at Soldier Field.
During the teams’ three meetings this season, the postgame handshakes between Johnson and LaFleur may have set a record for brevity.
Wild-card playoff game photos: Chicago Bears 31, Green Bay Packers 27
Johnson might have reignited this feud out of obligation, playing to a long-suffering Chicago crowd, but did this somehow become personal?
“This is a rivalry,” he told reporters at Halas Hall when asked about it Monday. “And (for) the city of Chicago, Green Bay — it needs to be a rivalry.”
That answer might’ve sufficed had Johnson not dropped an F-bomb during his postgame locker-room speech moments after the Bears rallied from an 18-point halftime deficit — scoring 25 points in the fourth quarter — to knock the Packers out of the playoffs 31-27.
This coming from an organization that so completely sanitized its lone season of “Hard Knocks” that C-SPAN appeared more riveting. Whose carefully curated coaches couldn’t be said to have even “vanilla” personalities because vanilla is an actual flavor.
But on Saturday night, Johnson stood in the locker room after the comeback victory and shouted, “F−−− the Packers! F−−− them! F−−−ing hate those guys,” with veins popping out of his neck.
And the buttoned-up Bears actually posted that (stuff) on social media.
It would appear Chairman George McCaskey, the NFL’s Mr. Rogers, is completely OK with it too. Pressed repeatedly about the backstory leading up to the 213th chapter of this blood feud, Johnson admitted Monday: “I don’t like that team. So George and I have talked, and we’re on the same page.”
Finally.
For years, the Bears have tried to stand up to the bully up north but suffered losing streaks of 10 games in the 1990s and 11 in the last decade. They bowed to Aaron Rodgers 25 times in 30 meetings, including an NFC championship game loss, then watched Rodgers go on to win his only Super Bowl that season.
For years, they’ve had to choke on Rodgers’ words: “I own you.”
This wasn’t a rivalry, really, as lopsided as it was. This was Alfalfa swinging wildly and fruitlessly at Butch as Butch held him at bay by his head.
You know who gets that “Little Rascals” reference? People who were around for the Bears’ previous playoff win against the Packers on Dec. 14, 1941.
But that all changed this season.
Whether the Bears go on to win the Super Bowl next month or the Packers sweep them next season, this three-game series signaled to both sides that the rivalry is more than just lip service.
After the Bears lost 28-21 in Week 14 at Lambeau Field, Packers fans streamed into the concourse chanting, “Bears still suck!”
But that scene demonstrated two things: A) those fans held their collective breath until Caleb Williams’ last throw was intercepted, avoiding becoming the latest victim of another miraculous comeback by the Cardiac Bears, and B) saying the Bears “still suck” implicitly admits you no longer expect them to.
That has carried over to the locker rooms and the playing field.
After Bears wide receiver DJ Moore hauled in a walk-off touchdown for a 22-16 overtime win in Week 16, he said he wore a cheese grater hat (the natural enemy of the Cheesehead hat) in the locker room “because they always tripping.”
During the pregame scuffle Saturday, Bears safety Kevin Byard III said, “I just looked over and see everybody’s getting into it. So we ran over there to defend our guys, but that’s just this rivalry, you know?”
Byard said he and teammates took special satisfaction in the wild-card win because of all the chatter coming from Green Bay.
“Even before the game there was a lot of (crap) talking this week,” he said Saturday, “and not even just today, like throughout the week — like, we heard the noise.
“We heard the noise from Christian (Watson) and Keisean (Nixon), all the guys talking (crap). Even (defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley) was … telling the media in Green Bay that we’re going to see you next week. So we heard that loud and clear.”
The Packers calling out the Bears is uncharacteristic — if a rivalry isn’t all that competitive. Typically, a superior team will pump up the tomato can in interviews, not kick it. That said, here were the Packers last week:
- Hafley to reporters: “We are not going to be done, so I will see you guys next week.”
- Nixon on the playoff matchup: “I didn’t want nobody else. I wanted the Bears.”
- Watson: “We definitely wanted to play the Bears. We get a chance to put the Bears’ season to bed.”
“They wanted it and they got it,” Williams said after the Bears win.
Johnson leaned over the lectern and said: “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. This one meant something to us.”
It meant something to LaFleur too.
“This one is going to hurt for a really, really long time,” he said.
Memo to both teams: No need to play coy in the future. The cat’s out of the bag. It’s too late to say it’s not hate. And it certainly isn’t “just another game,” as coaches and players like to parrot.
“It’s a big game: first playoff game at home in a while,” Johnson said. “And we hadn’t won a playoff game in 15 years or so. But certainly the opponent, in and of itself, it means a lot to the city, this organization, and that’s something that we certainly play into a little bit as coaches and players is we know how big it is when Chicago plays Green Bay.”
Not only the two franchises, but the NFL also needs this oldest rivalry to mean something again.
Asked about the rivalry, Bears center Drew Dalman said, “I don’t place any significance on any of it,” but he added it was “awesome” to see his coach so animated in the locker room.
“You could just see the energy in the locker room,” linebacker Tremaine Edmunds said. “Everybody was like, OK, Ben got a little swag about himself.”
Said Dalman: “We have competitors all around the building, whether players, coaches, equipment staff, everybody, and so when you see people like that, it drives that same spirit in you. And it’s really fun to have a coach that’s fired up like that. I think the guys feed off of it.”
Chicago feeds off of it too.
When Jordan Love’s final, desperate throw fell harmlessly to the Soldier Field turf, Bears fans roared into the night air, banged on the walls and jumped in the stands with such force that it shook the press box — the clamor of a rivalry being reborn.
On the field, it was chaos and congratulations. The green-and-gold dragon had been slain.
“Games like that you’re going to remember your whole career and then even when you retire,” Edmunds said. “It’s going to go down in the history book.”
Now the Bears turn their attention to their next opponent, the Los Angeles Rams. Dalman said veteran quarterback Case Keenum warned them Monday not to lose sight of that while reveling in the rivalry.
“All that stuff is really awesome and it feels very emotional, but none of that affects the next week,” Dalman said. “If that happens, you celebrate it, but you throw out the positivity very quickly.
“Not to diminish it, but you’re like, ‘Now the priority is the Rams.’ You can’t have a lull coming off a game like that. So we’re definitely transitioning toward that.”