Thank you, Ben Johnson.
Thank you for making it personal. For screaming "F--- the Packers." For repeatedly reminding us how much you hate our team. For the cockiness and lack of class you showed Matt LaFleur when you shook his hand after the playoff game.
"I feel like he wants to beat them really bad," Bears wide receiver Luther Burden III said last week, via The Athletic's Dan Wiederer. "Like everybody else in the room. Like every Chicago fan. We want to beat them really bad. And make them quit."
In a sense, the Packers did quit in the fourth quarter, but only because they'd opened up a 31-7 lead. I'm not sure that's what Burden had in mind.
"We definitely flipped that on their head," said Packers wide receiver Christian Watson, via ESPN's Rob Demovsky.
LaFleur will never admit it, but his team took it personally.
It was a masterstroke from the Packers' head coach. He didn't need to stoop to Johnson's level publicly. LaFleur played it cool and dismissed any personal feelings toward Johnson or even the Bears. He let his team do the talking.
They hardly needed much motivation. Beyond the playoff heartbreak and Johnson calling the Packers out at every opportunity, we also had to sit through a nauseating offseason. Turn on any NFL show, and you'd hear analysts talking about Johnson like he had invented the forward pass.
Every action has a reaction, and Week 5 brought out the best in the Packers.
The clues were there. Tucker Kraft said last week that he prefers to do the talking with his pads. The Packers sure did that. Ben Johnson, your team took one helluva beating.
Ben Johnson helped reignite the Packers
Thank you, Ben Johnson, for reigniting the Packers.
Before this game, they lacked discipline, urgency. They sleepwalked their way to victories over the New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers but suffered crushing defeats to the Minnesota Vikings and Atlanta Falcons.
They couldn't sustain a drive. They couldn't protect Jordan Love. They couldn't stop the run. They couldn't even catch the football.
The Packers entered Week 5 as the league leaders in drops and fumbles, and ranked second in penalties. Per ESPN, they were 32nd in pass-block win rate. They had the 28th-ranked run defense. All concerning signs ahead of a matchup with this Bears team.
Sunday was different. The Packers may never admit it, but you could feel the extra energy, the intensity. This meant so much to this team. It was about as much of a must-win as a Week 5 game possibly can be.
Lose an emotional game in your own backyard to a division rival without their star quarterback, and the season could've unraveled fast.
Green Bay had only four penalties and cleaned up the unforced errors. The offensive line allowed two sacks but only six pressures, giving Jordan Love time to launch rockets at the Bears' secondary.
According to ESPN Insights, Love attempted six passes of 30-plus air yards, completing five for 227 yards and two touchdowns. Ben Roethlisberger is the only other quarterback to complete five passes of 30-plus air yards since 2006, when ESPN started tracking it.
Green Bay played with renewed energy. Johnson's words became his enemy as he helped reignite the Packers.
Ben Johnson made a critical error at quarterback
Thank you, Ben Johnson, for starting Tyson Bagent over Case Keenum.
The warning signs were there last week. While the box score showed Bagent completing 73.5 percent of his passes and helping the Bears dominate the New York Jets, it masked a few problems. Ryan Heckman of Bear Goggles On wrote about it before the game:
"In case you didn't watch all that closely, Bagent ended up with just one interception on the stat sheet. However, he threw three others that were all called back to penalties enforced on the Jets," Heckman wrote.
Case Keenum, meanwhile, genuinely looked good in his start against the Philadelphia Eagles. He ripped apart the Eagles' secondary to the tune of 247 yards and two touchdowns, and he ran in another score.
Keenum's reward was to get benched for Bagent. Johnson got too cute and didn't learn his lesson. We're thankful for that.
Ben Johnson's woeful record in the NFC North gets worse
Thank you, Ben Johnson, for saving your worst football for the NFC North.
Johnson is now 2-6 against division opposition. Last season, the Bears were swept by the Detroit Lions and split the series with the Packers and Vikings. They are 0-2 against the NFC North this season.
To his credit, Johnson's team did defeat two elite quarterbacks in, uh, *checks notes* J.J. McCarthy and Malik Willis. OK, maybe not.
Johnson has dominated the rest of the NFL, going 12-2 against teams outside of the NFC North. But division titles are won and lost in games against your rivals, and it's where Johnson struggles the most.
It's why the Bears, despite making a strong start to the season, are now rooted to the bottom of the NFC North. You have to win your divisional games.
There's still a long way to go, of course, and the 2026 NFL story has barely started. The Packers have a lot to prove, and one good performance doesn't wipe away the problems from the first month. But they won an important battle on Sunday. Not the war, but the first battle.
The Packers needed this. Badly. It was an early-season sink-or-swim moment, but they rose to the challenge and suddenly had a jolt of life they desperately needed.
Johnson helped make it happen with his words and his brashness and, ultimately, his poor decisions on gameday.
On behalf of every Packers fan, thank you.
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