CHICAGO – Another playoff heartbreaker sent the Packers into another offseason, this one a 31-27 decision at the hands of the Bears in the NFC Wild Card round at Soldier Field on Saturday night.
Here are five takeaways from the season-ending defeat:
- The Packers dominated the first half, but looked like a totally different team in the second.
Green Bay's offense scored touchdowns the first three times it had the ball, and the defense stopped three fourth-down attempts by the Bears, resulting in a 21-3 halftime lead.
Then Chicago morphed into the dominant club, turning the game around with a 28-6 margin in the second half to advance to the divisional playoffs.
"Obviously this one is gonna hurt for a really, really long time," Head Coach Matt LaFleur said. "When you are in complete control of a football game and the script gets flipped in the second half, and it was a lot of self-inflicted things …
"Credit to them. We knew they were a team that could come back and fight. We had opportunities to put them away and didn't get it done."
QB Jordan Love echoed those sentiments.
"It's tough and very disappointing," he said. "I think everybody in that locker room feels the same way. We had a game we couldn't finish and let a team come back and beat us. Very disappointing to end the season on a note like that. Everybody's very disappointed, I'm disappointed, that's it."
It fell apart one phase at a time.
- First it was the offense.
The Packers' first four possessions of the second half produced a grand total of one first down. It was more dramatic a shift from the early success than anyone could've foreseen.
LaFleur explained the Bears changed up schematically in the second half, frequently bringing blitzes off the edge that the Packers weren't blocking properly. Run or pass, there was no room to function, and the repeated stalls left the defense on the field way too much, running its tank empty.
"Just could not get anything going," LaFleur said. "It was too many opportunities when you have the ball and you're not scoring.
"They brought more pressure … firing corner blitzes and safety blitzes, and unfortunately there were multiple occasions where they should've been picked up and weren't."
Love finished 24-of-46 for 323 yards with four TDs – to four different targets – for a 103.8 passer rating. But his rating was 130 at halftime. Running back Josh Jacobs was also held to just six yards on seven carries in the second half after gaining 49 yards on 12 attempts in the first half.
"We didn't do as good of a job picking that stuff up and it hurt us," Love said. "Lack of execution and finding ways to make plays hurt us."
- Then it was the defense.
Despite getting no help from the offense in the third quarter, the defense still managed to hold the Bears out of the end zone, allowing two field goals and getting an interception near the goal line to thwart another drive.
But the unit eventually wore down, and Bears QB Caleb Williams took over, firing downfield with abandon and scoring three touchdowns (plus a two-point conversion) in the fourth quarter.
Those three TD drives covered 66, 76 and 66 yards and used a total of just 5:56 on the clock. It was chunk play after chunk play with little resistance.
Chicago took its first lead of the game just after the two-minute warning despite trailing 27-16 with less than six minutes left.
"He's a great player and he's proven it time and time again," LaFleur said of Williams, who finished with 361 yards passing (24-of-48, two TDs, two INTs), with 283 of those yards coming in the second half. "You just can't give him that many opportunities, and that's collectively. You've got to find a way to put them away."
Williams top target on the night was tight end Colston Loveland (eight catches, 137 yards), and the second-year QB made two backbreaking plays on Chicago's last two TD drives.
First, he connected with Rome Odunze for 27 yards on fourth-and-8 while shifting to his left and ripping a pass between multiple defenders. That set up a TD to get the Bears within 27-24 with just over four minutes to go.
Then he found DJ Moore for the go-ahead 25-yard TD down the left sideline when Moore beat Carrington Valentine with a double move and was practically uncovered at the goal line.
- The special teams did its part, too.
During their comeback, the Bears got punt returns of 37 and 22 yards from Devin Duvernay that helped their field position, and Green Bay's kicking game also faltered.
Kicker Brandon McManus left seven points out there. His missed 55-yard field goal on the final play of the first half was unfortunately a sign of worse to come.
When the Packers' offense finally got something going in the fourth quarter, sparked by Romeo Doubs (eight catches, 124 yards, TD), rookie Matthew Golden (4-84) scored his first career touchdown on a screen pass. But McManus missed the extra point, leaving the lead at 11 points instead of 12.
Then, leading 27-24, the offense put together another promising drive but stalled out, and McManus missed a 44-yard field goal that would've provided a six-point lead.
"Obviously the conditions were windy, but the difference was they made theirs and we did not," LaFleur said, referencing Bears kicker Cairo Santos' perfect night (three FGs, three PATs), including a 51-yarder early in the fourth quarter.
McManus' last miss proved even more costly after the Bears scored a touchdown to take the lead, leaving the Packers 1:43 on the clock to respond. Green Bay drove inside the Chicago 25-yard line, getting a clutch fourth-down conversion to Golden.
But down by four points instead of just one, Love had to fire a couple passes for the end zone that failed as the clock ran out.
- LaFleur did not address questions about his job security right after the game.
Asked multiple times whether he thinks he'll be back as Packers coach, LaFleur twice answered, "Now is not the time."
The Packers ended their season on a five-game losing streak, making the playoffs as the No. 7 seed for the third straight year, but have only one playoff victory in that time.
"I'm just hurting for these guys," LaFleur said. "I can only think about what just happened, and there will be time for that."
Love strongly expressed his desire to keep working with LaFleur, who later continued, about coaching the Packers: "It means everything to me. This is the greatest organization in the world in my opinion. It's very humbling.
"I'm certainly very disappointed now, disappointed for everybody associated with the Green Bay Packers, disappointed for our locker room, disappointed for our leadership, all our employees, everybody involved with the Green Bay Packers right now."
