I can’t remember a later first matchup in the season for the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears in my lifetime, but on this first weekend of December, the two teams finally square off once again in a continuation of the league’s oldest rivalry.
This matchup represents a potential start to a new phase or era of the rivalry. Ben Johnson’s arrival in Chicago has resulted in an unlikely transformation of the perennial basement dwellers of the NFC North. Only a small number of times this century have the Chicago Bears been relevant to the playoff picture come December and January, and in a development not even the biggest Bears homers could have foreseen, Chicago occupies the NFC’s top side with five games to go.