The drive-by handshake was quick and devoid of emotion, and no one should’ve expected anything different from the head coaches of the blood-rival Bears and Packers.
“See you in two weeks,” Ben Johnson said to Matt LaFleur on his way to the locker room.
The day started with Johnson’s Bears a half game up on LaFleur’s Packers, and Green Bay’s hard-fought 28–21 win in bone-chilling cold at Lambeau flipped the two in the NFC North standings. The game itself was everything you’d expect from one of these, when both teams are good: tough, physical, fueled through the run game and, yes, even a little personal.
The history of this newest iteration of the rivalry goes back to January, when Johnson was introduced as the Bears’ coach and said, “I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for the coaches and the players in this [division], having competed against them for the last six years. … And to be quite frank with you, I kind of enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.”
Those close to LaFleur were miffed. Stoking a rivalry at an introductory press conference is standard fare. But name-checking a coach you don’t know isn’t.
So, many around LaFleur wondered how the first interaction would go.
And then, after the Packers outlasted the Bears in what felt like a 12-round prize fight, LaFleur chose to forgo the pleasantries and exit the ring without much eye contact, conversation or acknowledgment. They will, after all, see each other again in two weeks.
“I mean, he said what he said, and it is what it is,” LaFleur told me a couple of hours later. “To me, it’s always about our players and our teams playing against each other. Ben does a hell of a job. I got a lot of respect for him as a coach, and they got a good team. They got good players, and it was evident tonight. We had a chance to kind of get out ahead of them in the second half, and they continued to battle and fight.
“I mean, shoot, it’s always a couple plays here and there, that’s the difference. Luckily, we made two plays at the end of the game.”
And in making those plays, we all got a little window into who these Packers are becoming.
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In some ways, what they’re becoming is a business-like embodiment of their head coach.
The plays, as he referenced, came from everywhere and everyone on Sunday, a show of the increasing balance and depth of the Packers’ operation.
After the Micah Parsons trade, there was an expectation that Green Bay would go from a good team to a steamroller. Then, Green Bay had the weird Week 3 loss in Cleveland, followed by the shootout in Dallas that ended in a tie, and a lot of folks either thought the Packers might not have improved as much as many expected or let them slip to the mental back burner.
But they kept chipping away, developing and building the roster beyond guys like Jordan Love, Parsons and Josh Jacobs. That would be needed when major injuries started to hit, ending the seasons of an offensive centerpiece (tight end Tucker Kraft) and a defensive cornerstone (Devonte Wyatt).
“It’s been all the guys collectively,” LaFleur said. “It’s hard to replace Tuck [Tucker Kraft], but Luke [Musgrave]—I can’t believe they overturned the one big catch he had down the field on the first drive. All those guys, they’ve done a great job because it’s hard to replace guys like Tucker and Devonte Wyatt. Then [Jayden] Reed’s missing the majority of the year, and you saw his impact tonight—his ability to go in there and be impactful.
“You need other dudes to step up like that, and I would say most times the teams that are healthiest at the end of the year are going to be the best. We’ve got a bunch of dudes that have been able to step up and make plays and kind of help alleviate some of the loss of some of those big-name guys.”
It also puts more players in a position to make game-changing plays when it matters most—and the guys LaFleur is referencing did on Sunday.
Five different players had multiple catches for the Packers, and 10 were targeted, despite Jordan Love logging only 25 total attempts. Christian Watson played like a No. 1, Reed made key catches and, as LaFleur said, Musgrave, even with only two catches for 22 yards (taking away the questionable overturn), looked the part of a guy who could step in and replace his draft classmate, Kraft.
Meanwhile, on defense, while stars such as Quay Walker, Edgerrin Cooper and Xavier McKinney filled up the stat sheet, and Parsons was his usual disruptive self, a couple of lesser-known names stepped forward to finish the Bears.
On third-and-1, from the Packers’ 14, backup edge Kingsley “JJ” Enagbare stoned Bears rookie Kyle Monangai in the hole for no gain. Enagbare, by the way, was a fifth-round pick in 2022, who kept hanging around, getting better and waiting for a chance to play behind first-round picks such as Lukas Van Ness, Rashan Gary, and, this year, Parsons. Van Ness’s injury opened the door in recent weeks for him to play more.
Then, on the next snap, a fourth-and-1, Caleb Williams play-faked, rolled left and tried to feather a ball into the end zone, leaving it a little short, allowing Packers corner Keisean Nixon to go up and get it, which ended the game. Nixon, you may remember, cut his teeth as a kick returner.
“We’ve been pretty balanced for the last couple of years,” LaFleur said. “It’s way different than the days of Davante Adams. I’m just talking offensively. I think we got a lot of good players. Luckily, we made two plays at the end of the game. JJ, the stop on third down, and then the pick on fourth down, and that was enough.”
Jordan Love and the Packers will get a rematch with Chicago in two weeks. / Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
So, yes, LaFleur likes how his team is developing.
At the same time, he’s hyperaware of the trap that can be set.
Heck, you may wonder if the Packers already slipped into it inadvertently earlier in the year, with the slip-up in Cleveland and the funky night in Dallas. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Either way, LaFleur’s not planning to let it happen again.
“There’s still a lot of ball in front of us, and it’s such a tight race,” he said. “It keeps us in the thick of it, obviously. We got a lot of challenges in front of us. You’re talking about just every team on our schedule is going to be a monster, in Denver, Chicago, Baltimore and Minnesota, so you just got to keep working, taking it a day at a time, one game at a time, and focus on what you have in front of you.
“You just can’t get too far out in front of yourself, because if you do that, you’re bound to slip up.”
From the stars like Love and Parsons, to those like Nixon and Enagbare and others further down the list, the Packers have found a way to stave off the temptation to do it. LaFleur knows everyone around him will have to keep it up.
Especially two weeks from now.
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