With 11 regular-season wins, Ben Johnson proved he was the right choice for the Chicago Bears.

With one playoff victory, Johnson showed this really might be a different era of Bears football.

With six words, two of which can’t be printed in full, Ben Johnson endeared himself to Bears fans, maybe forever.

“Man, f— the Packers,” he yelled in the locker room after the game. “F— them.”

Not. Done. Yet. pic.twitter.com/0rq2ZMPIQC

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) January 11, 2026

We know he said this because the team itself put it out there.

While some online scolds didn’t like Johnson’s profanity, this has played well in Chicago, a city that has been ravenous for a winning Bears team since the 20th Super Bowl. This coming one will be the 60th.

The Bears were cursed. Now they’re the ones doing the cursing.

The Bears-Packers rivalry is the oldest annual one in the NFL, but it has been decidedly one-sided since Aaron Rodgers took over for Brett Favre. (Favre, not to mention Bart Starr, also had a pretty nice run.) Though the Bears had won two of the last three matchups going into Saturday’s 31-27 playoff victory, the Packers had won a whopping 11 in a row going into the 2024 season finale. When Rodgers told Bears fans that he owned them in 2021, who could argue?

That’s why Chicago fans lash out and chant “F— Green Bay” at Blackhawks games, street festivals, bat mitzvahs and church picnics. It was more of a losers’ lament until now.

From the beginning of the 2009 season through the end of the 2025 regular season, Green Bay won 29 of 35 matchups between the teams, including the last time they met in the playoffs, the 2010 NFC Championship Game.

So with that context, if you’re not from these parts, you can understand why Bears players are wearing cheese-grater hats after the game, why fans were grating actual cheese at Soldier Field, why Packers players, fans (and radio hosts) are deep in their feelings after their societal norms were shattered, and why Johnson’s exhortation was so well-received.

The Bears are such a prim-and-proper organization that chairman George McCaskey forbade swearing on the normally f-bomb-filled “Hard Knocks” show. The only thing he hates more than a four-letter expletive is the Green Bay Packers.

“Like I said before, there’s a rivalry that exists between these two teams, something that I fully recognize and I’m a part of,” Johnson said. “I don’t like that team. So, George and I have talked, and we’re on the same page.”

Same page? George might legally adopt him for beating the Packers in the playoffs.

George McCaskey said hell naw to this Packers fan😂#dabears #bears #packers pic.twitter.com/90o7ZD43Ux

— Beardenlive (@beardenlive) January 7, 2026

The Bears still have something big to play for and are turning the page to the dangerous Los Angeles Rams — whom they last played in the postseason 40 years ago en route to a shuffling win in the Super Bowl. But Chicago is still celebrating the return of a real rivalry with the Packers.

To see Caleb Williams lean into the rivalry, to see Johnson go full meathead, was invigorating for the local and the NFL,  and the league’s fans should be thrilled as well.

This biannual game is almost always featured in primetime — TV cameras love the local scene shots as much as broadcast partners love the ratings — and if it can actually be competitive, even better.

Some rivalries are overhyped and often underdeliver (see the NFC East), and others are made because of certain star players — any QB-driven one, like Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady — but authentic regional rivalries that are alluring to national audiences are rare and must be appreciated.

Like Red Sox-Yankees, Bears-Packers is historic, personal and easy for outsiders to understand. It feels important because it’s genuine.

While the fans are always squabbling, the idea of two teams of professional athletes, not to mention coaches, actually disliking each other has become rarer. Players and coaches are chummier than ever, and there’s enough money and fame to go around to waste time being petty.

Sports are so corporate. Coaches and athletes are so polished. But both sides have been doing a lot of talking. There’s a real dislike between the players and coaches, and frankly, it’s encouraging.

Divisional and historic rivalries might wax and wane, based on competitiveness, but we are so fortunate, as a sports-loving society, when one like this explodes. As a Pittsburgh guy, I think of how intense the games were between the Baltimore Ravens and Steelers when hard-asses such as Hines Ward and Ray Lewis were taking things very personal, and how it made every game feel like an event.

We have a pretty good one coming up on Saturday in the divisional round. In recent years, there has been no love lost between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks. If the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills happen to advance this weekend, it would be a great matchup of rivals. The Belichick-Brady Patriots bullied the rest of the AFC for two decades.

These are buckle-your-chinstrap kinds of games, the ones that make the NFL the king of all sports. But baseball can also inspire true enmity.

In the NL Central, as the Cardinals rivalry has waned, the Cubs and Brewers have become bitter foes in recent years, especially since Craig Counsell crossed the Cheddar Curtain to manage the Cubs after the 2023 season. Counsell, formerly a Milwaukee favorite son, gets booed mercilessly every time he makes a pitching change at the Brewers’ park.

The small-market Brewers delighted in knocking out the Cubs from the playoffs this past fall, even posing with an L flag that a fan brought into the ballpark.

The Brewers are flying the L as they take pictures on the field. pic.twitter.com/csWNZVUTM7

— Hunter Baumgardt (@hunterbonair) October 12, 2025

Rivalries born during the postseason are especially juicy because of what’s at stake and the raw emotions that come during a playoff series. In my experience covering sports in Chicago, I think of the Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks going at it in the Western Conference and the Bulls and Miami Heat sparring in the East during the LeBron James run.

Bulls fans still smile at the memory of Kirk Hinrich straight-up tackling James in a win that ended Miami’s 27-game regular-season winning streak in 2013. The Heat would get the last laugh by beating them in the playoffs and, uh, winning the Finals, but forever-sad Bulls fans will always have that game to remember.

Of course, Michael Jordan and the Bulls had the mother of all rivalries with the Detroit Pistons back in the day. And once he figured out how to circumvent the “Jordan Rules” and beat Detroit, he won six titles.

When the Red Sox executed that miracle comeback over the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, a similar spell was lifted.

Chicago fans can only hope that history repeats itself and that one day people in Wisconsin will ask: How the heck can we beat those Bears?