Packers Lose Watson, Lose to Bears

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Photo by Emma Pravecek - packers.com

Emanuel Wilson rushes vs. the Bears, January 5, 2025

Emanuel Wilson rushes vs. the Bears, January 5, 2025

The Packers played an absolutely terrible game on Sunday, losing to a pathetic Bears team at home, and losing receiver Christian Watson to a severe knee injury. Entering this week the Packers had an outside chance of moving up to the sixth seed in the NFC playoffs if they could win and get an upset from Mike McCarthy and the Cowboys against the Washington Commanders. None of this worked out well. 

Matt LaFleur had a tough decision to make between resting his starters for the playoffs and conceding the better seed or going for the win and the slim chance of avoiding the Philadelphia Eagles in round one of the playoffs. Instead of making a decision, he attempted to split the baby, playing his starters early, but running an extremely vanilla game plan to keep important plays off tape, and limiting the carries of star running back Josh Jacobs. This is almost always a terrible idea, and the Packers were lucky that Jordan Love’s elbow injury sustained during the game was not more serious.

The fact is that it’s impossible to half-try to win an NFL game. Even a poor team like the Bears is good enough to beat an opponent that isn’t giving their full effort, and the Bears are always motivated to upset their archrivals whenever possible. Chicago pulled out every stop, running several gimmick plays, including two trick punt returns, one of which resulted in a touchdown, while their aggressive man-to-man defense shut down the Green Bay offense. With Green Bay not utilizing their entire playbook, they faced consistently poor down-and-distance situations, allowing the Bears defense to tee off. While the Packer defense kept the Bears in check, Chicago generated enough breaks to get the job done.

Despite their worst effort of the year, the Packers still found themselves leading 22-21 with 58-seconds to play thanks to an incredible, low line drive 55-yard field goal from Brandon McManus. On the subsequent drive, the Packers handed the Bears 15 yards on a horse collar tackle, and then, on third and eleven with only 15 second left, and Chicago sitting at midfield with no timeouts, they inexplicably played a Hail Mary defense, leaving the middle of the field wide open. Caleb Williams hit DJ Moore for an easy 18 yards, and after a spike to stop the clock, kicker Cairo Santos nailed a 51-yard field goal as time expired. Rarely have two teams showed less interest in actually winning a game. 

Facing the Eagles

It will be interesting to see how the Packers react to this loss. If you are a believer in momentum, this was as poor a finish to the season as you could possibly have. It can be difficult to remain confident in the wake of such a poorly played game following the debacle against the Vikings the previous week. Instead of wallowing, Matt LaFleur needs should seize on this game for motivation, and learn the lessons the Bears taught, because in many ways, the Bears did the Packers a favor. This should be a wake-up call. 

First, while Christian Watson’s injury is tragic, it was also probably inevitable. The dynamic receiver went down with a non-contact ACL tear while simply running in a straight line, and that knee was probably a ticking time bomb. Watson is among the most injury-prone players in the league, and while the team is much better when he’s on the field, it is better to lose him now, allowing the team to prepare without him, than to lose him in the first quarter of a playoff game. 

The Packers also need to take a long look at how they call games geared towards exploiting opposing weaknesses. The Bears did a fantastic job stymying the Packer offense twice this year, in both instances because the Packers became complacent in their play-calling and were unable to solve a man-to-man scheme. While Josh Jacobs is a fantastic running back, LaFleur has leaned on him to a fault, and the casualty has ironically been the play-action game. The traditional LaFleur offense uses power running to set up big plays off play-action, but in the second half of the season, the Packers have been power running because they like power running, not in service of the passing game. Prior to the bye Green Bay averaged 34 passing attempts per game, about the same as they did in 2023, but after the bye, they have only eclipsed 30 pass attempts once, and average just over 26 attempts per game. With a number of short screens and designed throwbacks scripted in the game plan, the casualty has been the big play.

Running the ball is an important part of the game, but this is fundamentally a big play offense, and they are generating far fewer big plays than they once were. The Bears played a man coverage heavy scheme against the Packers, almost daring them to try to throw downfield, and it worked. The only real attempt at a deep shot came on a desperation throw by Malik Willis to Malik Heath to get Green Bay into the red zone, but other than that, every play was extremely cautious. The Eagles possess the league’s number one rush defense, and while their pass defense is also quite good, running the ball more than the bare minimum against Philadelphia is a recipe for disaster.