Dee Friedman
Longtime division rivals Chicago and Green Bay get together on Sunday Night Football in week 10. Both teams will be coming off of a bye in week 9 and, a little further back, a loss in week 8. When the teams met in September, the 189th all time matchup between the NFC North foes, the Packers won 38-17 at Soldier Field. This continued a trend of recent Packer dominance; Green Bay has won two straight and eight of the last nine in the series.
Longtime division rivals Chicago and Green Bay get together on Sunday Night Football in week 10. Both teams will be coming off of a bye in week 9 and, a little further back, a loss in week 8. When the teams met in September, the 189th all time matchup between the NFC North foes, the Packers won 38-17 at Soldier Field. This continued a trend of recent Packer dominance; Green Bay has won two straight and eight of the last nine in the series.
The Bears led Green Bay three times during the first matchup, but the Packers pitched a 17-0 second half shutout en route to a 38-17 win. Aaron Rodgers completed 22 of 28 throws for 302 yards, four touchdown passes, and no interceptions. Jay Cutler, ever the gunslinger, fired two touchdowns and two picks in the loss. Cutler’s INTs were the only two turnovers in the game. Chicago out-gained the Packers 496-358, but the Bears went two for four in the redzone (one of Cutler’s INTs came inside the ten yard line) while the Packers were four of five.
After a week 1 loss to the Bills in overtime, Chicago rebounded with road wins over the 49ers and Jets, and all appeared well in Bears nation. Unfortunately for Chicago, the season isn’t three weeks long and the Bears went on to drop four of their next five. New England dominated the Bears 51-23 in week 8, one week after the Dolphins traveled to the Windy City and won 27-14. Chicago is 0-3 against the spread at home and 3-2 on the road. The Bears have difficulty defending the pass, and rank in the bottom third in the NFL with a -3 turnover margin.
Green Bay had won four straight heading into last week’s game, but Aaron Rodgers and company ran into a buzz saw in New Orleans, falling to Drew Brees and the Saints 44-23. The Packers recent four game winning streak including victories over the Bears, Vikings, Dolphins, and Panthers. The Packers are 3-0 at home with the games decided by an average margin of 20 points. They are 2-3 on the road, getting run over in all three losses and squeaking past Miami at the last second in a week 6 win. Green Bay is 4-3-1 against the spread including 2-0-1 at home, but they have one of the worst rushing defenses in the NFL and will be facing a rested Matt Forte (the NFL’s fifth leading rusher).
(Photo credit: Mike Morbeck (Flickr: Jay Cutler) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo may appear cropped from its original.)
