GREEN BAY – It all comes down to this.
On Saturday night, the Packers and Chicago Bears will meet for the third time in 35 days when the longtime rivals square off at Soldier Field in the NFC Wild Card playoffs.
The NFC North combatants split the regular-season series in rather dramatic fashion, beginning with Keisean Nixon's end-zone interception of Caleb Williams that sealed a 28-21 Packers win at Lambeau Field on Dec. 7.
Thirteen days later, the Bears rallied on their home turf from a 10-point deficit with five minutes left in regulation to force overtime and eventually prevail 22-16 on a game-winning, 46-yard touchdown pass to DJ Moore.
The win catapulted Chicago to its first division title in seven years while Green Bay claimed its own playoff berth four days later after Minnesota beat Detroit on Christmas Day.
With all the dominoes of the regular season now fallen, the Packers are welcoming this highly anticipated rubber match against the Bears with open arms.
"It's a crazy rivalry and the fact that we're playing them in the playoffs too, it just magnifies it another notch, almost," safety Xavier McKinney said. "You don't get to see moments like this. They don't come around that often, so when you get this type of moment, you definitely got to take advantage of it as much as you can."
Saturday night's matchup is a rarity on several fronts, beginning with the fact it's just the third time the Packers and Bears have met in NFL postseason play.
The first encounter came in the NFL's first-ever divisional playoff game in 1941, which served as a tiebreaker atop the NFL Western Division. Chicago prevailed 33-14 on its way to winning its fifth NFL championship.
The teams waited nearly 70 years for their next playoff matchup in the 2010 NFC Championship Game, which Green Bay won 21-14 en route to its fourth Super Bowl title.
Despite qualifying for the playoffs 13 times since then, this marks only the second time the Packers have met an NFC North adversary in postseason play since Super Bowl XLV. The other occurrence came during the 2012 wild-card round when Green Bay played Minnesota twice in the span of seven days.
The Packers advanced behind a 24-10 win over the Vikings at Lambeau Field on Jan. 5, 2013, the teams' third game over a 35-day span. Coincidentally, it's the same exact timeframe Green Bay and Chicago will play its best-of-three series this year.
"It's an opportunity," right guard Anthony Belton said. "We're in the playoffs. Bears, it's a good rivalry. You definitely feel it. My first time playing them, I wasn't aware that it was a rivalry until that week came and you definitely could feel it. It's a lot of excitement. It's a good atmosphere and it's gonna be fun."
It's been a long month for the Packers since Nixon's late-game heroics in the first matchup with Chicago. The following week, Green Bay lost Pro Bowl defensive end Micah Parsons for the remainder of the season to a torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered in a 34-26 loss to the Denver Broncos.
The Packers ended the regular season on a four-game losing streak, a stretch that included the overtime setback in Chicago and a 41-24 defeat at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens and Derrick Henry in Week 17 at Lambeau Field.
The latter loss locked the Packers into the No. 7 seed. With its injured reserve list swelling to 15, Green Bay chose to rest its starters in Sunday's regular-season finale in Minnesota.
The Packers lost the game, 16-3, but gained a pseudo-bye week. The potential benefit of that approach could be seen on the Packers' injury report, which listed only one player (cornerback Bo Melton) as an estimated non-participant on Tuesday.
Chicago opted to play most of its starters against Detroit as it looked to solidify itself as the No. 2 seed. The Bears lost 19-16 on a game-ending field goal but maintained their position after Philadelphia, resting its starters, fell 24-17 to Washington.
This week, the Packers haven't harped much on what happened last month in Chicago as much as they've centered focus on what Saturday night means for their season. But lessons from that late-game letdown stay with them.
"It's all about executing (down) to the last whistle. That's what it's going to come down to," receiver Jayden Reed said. "You can't let up, you can't relax, because we learned that when you relax and take your foot off the pedal, it can bite you in the ass. We learned that and we got to figure out how to not let that happen anymore."
Rested and re-focused, a resilient Green Bay locker room wants to be the physical, hard-charging unit that set the tone early in both of its previous meetings with the Bears this season.
The Packers feel if they do that, they stand their best chance to keep their championship aspirations alive.
"When you're playing a team multiple times, it just comes down to play style and who's going to really play the hardest," McKinney said. "At the end of the day, it's going to be about when you get in between those white lines, who's going to go the hardest every play for 60 minutes. Whoever does is usually the team that come out successful."
