Packers: Unscouted looks on offense will help in Week 1 vs. Bears

Unscouted looks will help the Green Bay Packers’ new offense in Week 1 against the Chicago Bears.

It’s been almost a year since the Chicago Bears came close to pulling off an upset in the season opener at Lambeau Field. The Bears built an early lead with dominant defense and a new-look offense the Green Bay Packers had no answer for.

And it’s no surprise. They didn’t know what to expect. It was Matt Nagy’s first game as a head coach, and he was bringing his own offense to the Bears.

Packers defensive coordinator Mike Pettine would’ve had an idea about the style Nagy’s offense would have, but there was no tape to watch outside of other offenses he had worked in.

Well, now the script is flipped. The Packers will enter Soldier Field in the season opener, and this time it’ll be the Bears’ new defensive coordinator, Chuck Pagano, who will have to prepare for a debuting head coach and an offense he hasn’t seen before.

Again, Pagano might have an idea of what to expect. LaFleur was the offensive coordinator in Tennessee last year and has recently been a part of Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan’s offenses. So it’s fair to assume there will be similarities to all three offenses.

But outside of that, there will be a lot of guessing early on for the Bears defense.

That’s a completely different scenario to how the Bears would’ve prepared for Green Bay’s offense last season. They knew what to expect with Mike McCarthy calling the plays. While there are always changes made each offseason, the Bears had years of tape to study on how McCarthy called plays and ran the Packers offense.

In Week 1 of the 2018 season, Green Bay’s defense looked lost as it tried to counter against Nagy’s creativity. Pettine did eventually adjust in the second half, but they were already down by three scores.

It took a miracle comeback for the Packers to win, but the Bears played the first half perfectly.

Now LaFleur will look to replicate that when his new Packers offense debuts against the league’s No. 1 scoring defense from 2018 in the season opener.