Cover your eyes: It can often be a humiliating experience when Bears face Packers in prime time

CHICAGO — Aaron Rodgers to Brandon Bostick. Touchdown.

Aaron Rodgers to Andrew Quarless. Touchdown.

Aaron Rodgers to Jordy Nelson. Another touchdown.

Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers.

Touchdown.

Touchdown.

Touchdown.

That glowing scoreboard taunt seemed to burn into the retinas of every member of the Chicago Bears organization: 42-0 Green Bay Packers.

Six Rodgers touchdown passes.

At halftime!

Do you remember that night, Chicago? The embarrassment. The humiliation. The despondency.

Six Novembers ago, the Bears went to Green Bay during an already-wayward season and displayed on a prime-time stage just how broken they really were.

WBBM-AM sideline reporter Zach Zaidman stopped coach Marc Trestman on his way into the locker room after the second quarter and, grasping for anything, wondered how the Bears would even begin to regroup.

“We’re not a good football team right now,” Trestman confessed. “So that’s the baseline for where we’re going to start the second half. We played 30 minutes of terrible football in all three phases. And we’ve got to just start over. That’s all we can do.”

Somewhere inside a luxury box at Lambeau Field, Bears chairman George McCaskey and team president Ted Phillips were staggered. And stewing. Virginia McCaskey, as we’d learn from her son eight weeks later during a front office and coaching staff detonation, was “pissed off.”

On that grave night in Green Bay, the Bears hit rock bottom and passed the point of no return on their way there. A plunge toward last place had accelerated and deep conversations about major organizational changes quickly grew more serious.

It felt awful — all of it — for everyone involved.

So be very careful this week in asking “How bad can it really get?” This season’s Bears are still frantically searching for answers, still attempting to gather themselves before their latest skid becomes a collapse.

And as they head back to Green Bay this weekend, they are coming off a bye week, reeling from a four-game losing streak and still desperately trying to fix a malfunctioning offense that’s arguably more discombobulated now than it has been at any point in the past 15 years.

Matt Nagy and his coaching staff remain confident they found things during their bye week self-scouting mission that can, at the very least, help boost the offensive production. But the Bears will be testing their latest troubleshooting methods under the white-hot spotlight of “Sunday Night Football.” With the rest of the league watching closely — and Rodgers challenging them to keep up — the challenge will be daunting.

Furthermore, in recent history, facing the Packers in prime time has rarely been a feel-good experience for the Bears or their tormented fan base. Over the previous 20 seasons, the Bears are 5-12 against the Packers in prime time. And many of those losses have been harrowing experiences, fully illuminating the team’s biggest flaws and most extreme failures.

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The nadir, of course, was that unmitigated disaster in 2014. But that’s far from the only prime-time loss to the Packers that has felt like a Mike Tyson uppercut.

Back in 2003, Brett Favre and Ahman Green helped ruin the grand opening of the new Soldier Field. Like really ruined it. Packers 38, Bears 23.

In the early stages of a seven-sack mauling in 2012, Jay Cutler blew his lid and shoved offensive tackle J’Marcus Webb for all to see. Cutler and the Bears seemed rattled the entire night and fell 23-10.

The Mike Glennon experience at Lambeau Field in 2017 was as comical as it was ugly, a clumsy, sloppy, turnover-filled mess that ended with a 35-14 Bears loss and an earlier-than-hoped-for turn to Mitch Trubisky for help.

In 2018, Rodgers overcame a knee injury and rallied the Packers back from 20 points down in the second half to punctuate a rousing 24-23 victory.

Heck, even on the way to the Super Bowl in 2006, the Bears closed the regular season with a 26-7 prime time loss to the Packers, a drunken New Year’s Eve stumble in which Rex Grossman had more interceptions (three) than completions (two) on the 12 passes he threw, posting the dreaded 0.0 passer rating. Brian Griese came on in relief and threw two picks himself.

And don’t forget that just last season the Bears marched into the “Kickoff Game” of the NFL’s 100th season with the entire organization believing it was beginning an exhilarating journey toward the Super Bowl. The expectations were grand. The pre-game electricity was indescribable.

And then? The Bears failed to score a touchdown, lost 10-3 at Soldier Field and killed an entire city’s hopeful intoxication.

Unbeknownst to anyone in the moment, that night offered a discouraging sneak preview of the next 14 months. Way too much offensive ineptitude. Far too many ugly losses. Yet another reminder that the Packers remain better equipped to attain success and are better prepared to sustain it.

All in all, the Packers are still just better. And they often take advantage of the bright lights and the big stage to prove it.

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None of this is to declare that the Bears have no chance of pulling off a season-saving upset Sunday night. Sure, the oddsmakers believe the NFC’s longest current losing streak will tick up to five and sharpen Chicago’s agitation. The Bears are 8 1/2-point underdogs. But with a top-tier defense that is still the league’s best both on third down and inside the red zone, it’s highly improbable that Rodgers will light the Bears up to the tune of 315 first-half yards and a half-dozen TD passes as he did six years ago.

Still, if that 2014 defense was the franchise’s beyond-repair unit, this season’s offense has been the obvious weak link with Nagy pulling the trigger on a quarterback change in Week 3 yet somehow plunging the Bears into deeper disarray. In Nick Foles’ seven starts, the Bears have averaged 16.7 points and 272.1 yards per game and just 2.8 yards per rushing attempt.

They have lost five of those seven games and scored multiple times in just six of 28 quarters.

Now, with Foles battling his own slump plus a painful hip injury, the Bears may well opt for change again, turning back to Trubisky and asking the quarterback whom they benched in September and whose fifth-year contract option they declined last spring to take the steering wheel of a bottom-tier offense with a depleted and overhauled offensive line.

And, oh by the way, Trubisky is still working back from a Nov. 1 shoulder injury that made him inactive for games against the Tennessee Titans and Minnesota Vikings. On top of that, the past two seasons when Trubisky has returned from shoulder injuries, his first contest back — in 2018 versus the Rams and last season against the Saints — were, to put it nicely, shaky.

Moreover, Rodgers and the Packers are averaging 30.8 points per game in their 7-3 start. The Bears? They’ve only reached 30 points as a team three times in the past two seasons.

Still, the Bears may suddenly be reaching for the Trubisky tonic to cure their headaches and nausea. And Nagy is again whistling with optimism, hopeful that an eight-week benching might somehow finally bring out the best in his young quarterback on a regular basis.

“In this sport, in this world, in life, adversity strikes,” Nagy said. “Sometimes people take that and make it a big-time positive. At times, when you think it’s the worst feeling in the world with what you’re going through, sometimes those moments are the best thing that ever happened to you.”

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Given the Bears’ grand but fading playoff aspirations; given the Packers’ status as the NFC North leaders; given the anxiety that comes with the Bears’ 42 days (and counting) victory drought, it makes little sense to ignore the stakes of Sunday’s contest or minimize the urgency.

Nagy understands as much and emphasized earlier this week that the Bears have to walk into Lambeau Field with an appropriate combination of confidence and resolve.

In his 2020 version of “Did you watch the Colts game?” Nagy has proof from Week 11 that the Packers aren’t invincible, even when they’re playing well. Last weekend, a 28-14 halftime lead turned into a 34-31 overtime loss in Indianapolis. And for Nagy, there was a message for his players folded within that game.

“You saw a (Packers) team that came out throwing a bunch of haymakers early on in that first half,” Nagy said. “And I thought Indianapolis did a really good job of weathering the storm. They never panicked.”

Little by little, the Colts chipped away. They cut the Packers lead to 11, then down to three. They tied the game, went ahead, then, after going into overtime, ultimately forced a fumble and turned it into a game-winning field goal.

“I think if there was anything we learned from that game,” Nagy said, “it’s that regardless if you are up by two scores or down by two scores, you have to fight and it will always come down to the very end.”

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Fight has been an oft-used word at Halas Hall this week with players again relying on their determination and unity as an effective floatation device.

Said running back David Montgomery: “We’re fighters. We’re the Chicago Bears. That’s the definition of a Chicago Bear. You’re a fighter. Regardless of the situation, regardless of what it may look like, it’s being able to put the horse blinders and just focus on the task at hand.”

This week’s task may require the Bears to deliver their best performance of the entire season to upset a confident Packers team that has also been snapped to attention after last week’s loss.

Edge rusher Robert Quinn said the Bears are feeling “a prideful frustration” right now and have been both bothered and motivated by this recent four-game losing streak. Quinn hopes the bye week stimulated some necessary reflection for everyone.

“As a team, we all look ourselves in the mirror and realize who we are and what we have here.”

The Bears still believe they have a playoff-caliber roster and a playoff-caliber defense and a playoff-caliber combination of belief and drive.

Still, no one has mistaken the offense as playoff-caliber. And the Bears haven’t regularly beaten playoff-caliber opponents either. In 2018 and 2019 combined, only four of their 20 victories came against teams that qualified for the postseason.

This season, they are currently 1-4 against teams currently sitting inside the NFL’s playoff picture frame.

The Packers are waiting this weekend. And once again, for the Bears, this feels like a huge game and potentially a defining moment.

Sunday night’s performance — good or bad — might prove unforgettable and determine the direction of the rest of the season.

For Bears fans, the anticipation and anxiety feels all too familiar.

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