{"id":664184,"date":"2026-01-08T16:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/664184\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:29:11","slug":"the-season-will-be-viewed-as-a-disaster-if-the-packers-lose-to-the-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/664184\/","title":{"rendered":"The Season Will Be Viewed As A Disaster If the Packers Lose To the Bears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting to the playoffs is an accomplishment in and of itself in the NFL. For many franchises, a playoff berth is enough satisfaction to consider a season a success.<\/p>\n

For the Green Bay Packers, backing into the playoffs three years in a row as the No. 7 seed is fine (to a degree) but not entirely acceptable. Now a date with the No. 2-seeded Chicago Bears awaits on Saturday. If the Packers lose, the season will be viewed as a disaster.<\/p>\n

After a 2-0 start where it felt like the Packers were firing on all cylinders<\/a>, dreams of the Super Bowl started creeping into the minds of many. Of course, the journey is long, and the road is full of bumps \u2014 some bigger than others. And the Packers ran into an awfully bumpy road.<\/p>\n

Green Bay has 15 players<\/a> on season-ending injured reserve. That number could grow to 16 depending on Bo Melton<\/a>\u2018s status after he suffered a knee injury<\/a> against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The pressure for a deeper playoff run was mounting before the injuries. Despite them, it has not entirely abated.<\/p>\n

Ed Policy took over as CEO and team president and made it clear<\/a> last offseason that he would not immediately extend head coach Matt LaFleur or general manager Brian Gutekunst, while also noting he didn\u2019t like lame-duck situations. With two years left on both their deals, LaFleur and Gutekunst would enter next season in exactly that lame-duck scenario.<\/p>\n

On top of that, the trade<\/a> for\u00a0Micah Parsons<\/a>, who\u2019s out for the year with a torn ACL<\/a>, significantly amplified the urgency for the Packers to take advantage of their championship window.<\/p>\n

Coming up short of the division was a small dagger \u2014 small because the Packers are still going to the playoffs, but a dagger nonetheless. The Bears went from worst to first in the NFC North in Ben Johnson\u2019s first year, and every team in the division has now claimed the North since the Packers last won it.<\/p>\n

Policy seems to view the season through a more optimistic lens. In his monthly column, \u201cPolicy\u2019s Perspective,\u201d on the Packers website<\/a>, he seemed pleased with where the Packers were at entering the final week of the season.<\/p>\n

Adversity is the norm in the National Football League, and I am extremely proud of how our team has handled many challenges. Last season we struggled within our division and this year we improved to 4-1. We\u2019ve persevered through a litany of injuries and a very challenging schedule and placed ourselves in a position to compete for our ultimate goal, a Super Bowl championship.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the Packers went 4-2 in the division this year after a 1-5 showing last year. It still wasn\u2019t good enough to win the NFC North, which is fairly disappointing. Just improving the division record, but still not winning it, isn\u2019t a great consolation prize. For what it\u2019s worth, it was a bizarre season in the division. The Bears claimed the title despite a 2-4 record against the Packers, Vikings, and Detroit Lions. It was the first time a team won a division in the NFL while going under .500 against the division since the Kansas City Chiefs did so in 2010.<\/p>\n

All of this set up a matchup with the Bears and Packers on Saturday night on Wild Card Weekend. A loss in any fashion will make it impossible to view the 2025 season as anything other than a disaster for Green Bay.<\/p>\n

Suffering a season-ending loss to Chicago would fester in the minds of many for the entire offseason.<\/p>\n

Backing into the last playoff spot for a third year in a row is also not something the Packers will be puffing their chests out about, nor should they. It feels somewhat spoiled to talk about getting to the playoffs in the wrong way, but the Packers have been too close too often lately. The goal for the year definitely wasn\u2019t to limp into the postseason losing four in a row.<\/p>\n

The glass-half-full crowd will point to the injuries and some of the young players taking a step in their development when the season ends for the Packers. In reality, if the season ends Saturday, the storm that has brewed for over a month now will come crashing down on Green Bay.<\/p>\n

A season-ending loss to the Bears will leave a wound that won\u2019t soon be healed. Having lost five in a row to end the season will be another black eye to deal with. Figuring out how to get back to the top of the North, not just sneaking into the postseason as the last team, will be a point of emphasis \u2014 but, then, hasn\u2019t it been the past couple of years? That\u2019s what makes this so frustrating, and potentially worse than just frustrating. Not even Policy could paint it any other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting to the playoffs is an accomplishment in and of itself in the NFL. For many franchises, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2072],"tags":[1035,24503,7,41,345,2514,2513,1724,3031,491,6,428],"class_list":["post-664184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-green-bay-packers","tag-ben-johnson","tag-ed-policy","tag-football","tag-green-bay","tag-green-bay-packers","tag-greenbay","tag-greenbaypackers","tag-jordan-love","tag-matt-lafleur","tag-micah-parsons","tag-nfl","tag-packers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115860430132096337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}