It's the Green Bay Packers. The Chicago Bears. Under the lights. Let's do this.
The NFL has announced the schedule for the NFC Wild Card Round. The Packers and Bears will meet again for the third time in six weeks, and the league is placing it under the lights on Saturday night, a 7 p.m. CT kickoff from Soldier Field. It's the blockbuster spotlight it deserves.
Everything pointed toward this. For weeks, Round III has looked inevitable. And despite the Bears' best efforts to dodge the Packers by losing in Week 18, the chips have fallen in the most dramatic of ways.
Packers-Bears III is flooded with storylines in a potential primetime blockbuster
Redemption is the theme. Both teams desperately want it. Forget that, they need it.
The Packers can still taste the embarrassment at Soldier Field just two weeks ago, a monumental meltdown usually reserved for Green Bay's heartbreaking playoff exits. It hurt. Badly. They haven't won a game since. But the beauty of this rematch is that the Packers can almost erase that game from existence. A win next week makes their Week 16 nightmare utterly meaningless.
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Packers fans still remember Ben Johnson smugly telling reporters how much he enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year. They can not only prevent that from happening, but also get the ultimate revenge by ending Johnson's first season in Chicago.
For the Bears, it runs far deeper. Their fan base still has nightmares of Aaron Rodgers, who had the audacity to tell Bears fans he owned their team. To their faces. In their stadium.
Why do you hear "Green Bay Sucks" chants at Cubs and Blackhawks games? That's years of hurt inflicted on their fan base by the Packers. They can fire back and signal a changing of the guard in the NFC North with a win.
We've both enjoyed and endured two heavyweight showdowns between these teams this season. The Packers held off the Bears' late surge at Lambeau Field, with Keisean Nixon intercepting Caleb Williams to end the game. Two weeks later, Nixon became the Packers' villain, surrendering the tying and losing touchdowns to cap off a nightmare collapse after Romeo Doubs botched the onside kick.
Jordan Love hasn't played since he suffered a concussion in this exact matchup at Soldier Field last month.
He gets his shot at redemption. That's the theme of this one.