#727 Packers Unscripted: Bring on the Bears

it on in the football field. And what better way from the Green Bay Packers and the Jordan love Ara to kick things off than going down to Soldier Field to play their longest rival. Yeah.

been significant. You know, the Packers and Bears played the first game at lambeau Field, The Packers and Bears were the first game of the Vince Lombardi era, the first game of the Mike McCarthy era, a lot of those, and the first game of the Matt Lafleur era, and now the first game of the Jordan Love era with him taking over for Aaron Rodgers. And now it'll be interesting because you know, there's going to be all of the excitement, all the build up, all of the nerves

and all that. But I think what one thing that I think will really work to Jordan Love's advantage in this situation on Sunday at Soldier Field is that he has actually started an NFL game before, and he did it on the road at Arrowhead Stadium in a tough

place to play. So as much as there is so much anticipation for this game and signaling the transition to the new era at starting quarterback, at least from Jordan Love's perspective, everything about going through the pregame and the preparation and knowing that you're going to go out there and play four quarters against an opponent with the crowd

against you and all that kind of stuff. He's been through it before, and I think that that is at least a little bit of something that he can hang his hat on as he makes this momentous start.

a preseason. But I thought that when you look at every step of Jordan Love's journey from the first preseason to that game against Kansas City Spots start in twenty one, playing a little bit against Detroit later that same season in the second half when the Packers already had their seed wrapped up, and then lastly last year against Philadelphia, every single time I thought you saw progress from him, not just in the stat books, but in how he carried himself as a quarterback, in the way in which

he played the position. This is going to be a hostile environment because the Chicago Bears and their fans, they're going to be energized. As much as you and I think have talked about, you know, expectations on the Detroit Lions this year as they've continued to make this progress underneath Dan Campbell. The Bears feel likewise. They feel like with Justin Fields, they have their quarterback of the future. They feel like they've drafted well, They've made the right signings.

Are they going to be a team that's going to contend for a Super Bowl this year? I wouldn't think so, But they believe they should go into this game and be able to change the tide here in this rivalry against the Packers, and from the Packers' perspective, from Love's perspective, what better way to put your stamp on things than going back down into Soldier Field and continue in this winning streak that Matt Lafleur has been I'm sure he's not going to want to talk about it this week,

but eight tries against the Chicago Bears and eight victories so far, Green Bay has really controlled the tempo of this thing, and obviously, now that's something that Jordan Love wants to continue to build upon.

a young man, he bleeve. He rushed for over a thousand yards last year, which doesn't happen very often at the quarterback position. I think the word out of Chicago is that they would like Justin Fields to not have to run as much, to not maybe run as much as the did last year, to try to hang in the pocket and make more plays with his arm, because

he certainly does have the arm to do that. And one thing the Bears did to help him significantly in that regards they went out and got DJ Moore, the wide receiver from Carolina, who may not be a household name in terms of wide receivers, but you look at what he accomplished in five seasons at Carolina over five thousand receiving yards. Three of those years he was over

eleven hundred receiving yards. This is the most accomplished offensive perimeter weapon that the Bears have to go with Justin Fields now, and he's going to be a player to keep an eye on come Sunday.

He's going to be looking to achieve. But even the way they've built the rest of this roster out now, right, Mercedes lewis up in Chicago, Robert Tunyan is in Chicago now, Cole Kmet just got a you know, extension, got rewarded, and they feel like he's going to be a big part of this thing too. I think the Bears have tried to figure out this offseason. Okay, what does Justin Fields do well? Where can we help him and in what areas can we take what he's already done well

and improve upon that. Having a guy like Mercedes does that. Having you know, an offensive line that I think is trying to make steps forward here and trying to galvanize itself is going to do that. But at the end of the day, the Bears needed receivers, and as good of a story as Darnell Mooney was last year, they just didn't really have a lot of guys that fields could go to. So he did have to improvise a lot. You're right, Mike. Last year he ran for eleven hundred yards.

You know, he threw for seventeen touchdowns. But at the end of the day, the Bears still worth three and fourteen. It didn't translate to wins. They needed to deepen out this roster on both sides of the ball, and I think when you see someone like more come in that has the amount of energy that he has, there's a feeling that this is one of those number one receivers that we've been missing and a guy that could potentially, you know, kind of pick up for what they've lacked since Alan Robinson left.

to describe his running style. It's nothing that's overly dynamic, but he's not exactly easy to bring down a lot of times.

the way that this offense was built originally. It's that Matt Forte type back right, and obviously Herbert is not forte in terms of size, but a guy that could be in every down type of presence for you. I think that's probably where they wanted to get back to a little bit this offseason. Montgomery ends up with the Detroit Lions, and the Bear said, you know what, we like what we have in house. We're going to continue

to develop this guy. Now, what's always going to be interesting is I looked at the pairing of fields in Montgomery almost as like a running back tandem, right, Yeah, you know, not so much thunder and lightning, but just different guys that can do different things with their ball in their hands. Herbert gets them back to probably more of just the between the tackles type runner, and I'm very curious to see how he can make, you know, fields life a little bit easier too in that regard.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to being healthy. And I think when you look at the Montgomery era in Chicago, that was one area where they just they had to keep turning to different running backs because Montgomery got banged up. If Herbert can be the guy and stay on the field him like he has the past two seasons for the most part, you know, this is gonna be someone that I think they feel like they can hang their hat on in this season and years to come.

But what catches your eye when you look at this Bears lineup on the defensive side is the three off the ball linebackers in this four to three because they have They got TJ. Edwards from the Philadelphia Eagles, they got Tremaine Edmonds from the Buffalo Bills, and then Jack Sanborn who they developed he was a rookie last season. And of course I don't want my you know, Wisconsin bias to shine through too much here, but TJ. Edwards and Jack Sanborn, former Wisconsin and Badgers who are are

making their way here in the NFL. And then you plug in a former, you know, very high draft pick in Tremaine Edmonds coming out coming out of Buffalo. That's the that sort of seems to be what the core

of the Bears defense is going to be. Now, not to say that they're completely hearkening back to you know, the Brian Erleck or Lance Briggs days of those off the ball linebackers, but in some senses that's that's going to be the you know, where the targets are when you try to go after the Chicago Bears defense.

be a player for us. But Edmunds is a guy I really like because I feel like you always have to have an athletic, rangey type of linebacker that can do all the grunt work but also can drop back in the coverage. I thought TJ. Edwards is a great compliment to that as well. In a lot of ways

you hope for the Bears. You know, I'm sure the Bears are hoping it's more successful than what they did about what was that five six years ago when they completely overhauled their linebacker situation when they signed Danny Travathian. When they signed I think it was Darrell Freeman and that inside backer do just didn't quite get them to where they needed to be. You know, this to these two guys a little bit more athletic, I think, a little bit younger in kind of looking to see what

they have in front of them. But they need that to be the nucleus because I don't know right now what that defensive front gives them in terms of pressing the quarterback. That is probably the biggest area they've transitioned here. A lot of those household names that they had for so many years upfront that you could count on for, you know, ten fifteen sacks, they're not there now. You know, there's no Khalil Mack, the Akeem Hickses of the world in his prime, like those type of players set the

tone for that entire unit. That's gonna be one of the big transitions. But they still do have veterans too though. I mean you look at the back end, Eddie Jackson is still doing his thing back there. They have depth, but it's now just gonna be a question of what does that pass rush offer in behind it? How do they handle opposing offenses? Yeah?

a whole bunch of big time highlights or anything. But they were defenses that we that were just sound that were difficult to solve that times because they didn't have any you know, big weak spots that that stood out to you. That's what Matt Eberflus is trying to build. That's why he's trying to build the middle of that defense with those linebackers as as the core of things. And and we'll see how how it works out for

them going into going into year two. Give me your sense of what you feel the atmosphere will be like at Soldier Field, because there is so much anticipation for this Bears team, but yet it only had three victories

last year. You know, it's hard when we're not in Chicago every day to get a sense of, Okay, just how patient are Bears fans going to be with this new regime and everything else, and certainly starting off against the Packers, it's a big time opportunity for the Bears to make a statement in week one, as you said earlier, coming off of you know, kind of three decades of dominance by Brett Farv and Aaron Rodgers as Packers quarterbacks.

hopes are hanging on that young quarterback. Think about it, This was a great year to be going into the quarterback business. A lot of guys went off the board, a lot of teams moving up to get guys, a lot of equity being traded around trying to find the next franchise guy. The Bears fell into that number one spot and they said, you know what, We're good. We got our guy. We're excited about this dude. And here they are now kind of going into another season, marching

into another season. The part that always strikes me as interesting is it follows the same script. I don't know if it's media driven, I don't know if it's just a response from coaches, but this script is always the same. When a young quarterback that is a scrambler, that's a runner, produces on the ground with his feet, the narrative always changes in year two and three, sometimes four, to hey can they throw more? Can they become more of a

pocket passer. That's where the Chicago Bears are going to know better than you and I as far as what they feel like fields can be in the long run, because you do need to keep them healthy, you do need to keep him out there. But he also utilizes his feet in a way a lot of quarterbacks haven't been able to. I don't take it as just a flight or flight mechanism with him. I look at it as he is a legitimate running threat, running back threat, and I don't think I think there's been a dearth

of those in the league. There's been guys who can run like Patrick Mahomes that are natural passers, and there's been guys that they just run for the sake of running because they're getting out of their progressions. Fields went through his progressions, but a lot of times it kind of went to him having to scramble to make plays with his feet last year with more weapons this season.

When you ask me the expectations, what the atmosphere is going to be like, I think this one's going to be really electric for the Bear standpoint, but I think it's also predicated on them being able to keep some wins going the first month of the season to keep that energy flowing in that direction. Yeah.

in a bowl. Cousin Subs fifty years of better. All right. So, as much as the spotlight in this game is on Jordan Love making his first start as the air parent to Aaron Rodgers, there are a lot of guys. We talked about our last couple of shows about how young this Packers roster is. A lot of a lot of green Bay Packers will be making their NFL debuts. There

are a whole bunch of rookies on this roster. Now we don't know who all necessarily is going to play, but you talk about a way to sort of shake off those first NFL jitters, Throw yourself into a Packers Bears game in week one of your rookie season and here we go.

You want to have it on the blind side of your quarterback. The Packers have that in David Baktiari and Elton Jenkins. They have guys in the backfield that know what they're doing and blood, you know, blitz protection and being able to be a checkdown option in Aaron Jones and aj Dillon. Where they're young is the position where

sometimes you want to be young, right. You want to have young receivers like Jayden Reid come into your offense, a guy like Malik Heath who's probably gonna see some snaps right out of the gate even though he was an undrafted rookie, and someone like Luke Musgrave who will be ling learning on the job this year as a tight end one. But I'll tell you what, Mike for being a rookie, really impressed me in camp in terms of what he was able to do out of the

gate at a very complicated position. This is going to be a supreme challenge for this football team. They're going to have to hang their hat at times on their defense and they're going to need the defense to play to that standard. But that being said, as you myself, Larry mccaern, we've all talked about the Packers team, assuming they can stay healthy, that takes the field, that soldier field in week one is not going to look anything

like the last one. In Week eighteen when the Bears come to Green Bay to play the Packers, right, it is going to be developed, It is going to be matured, and you just hope through the course of that season, those eighteen weeks, those seventeen games, you can pick up enough wins along the way that keeps you hunting the hunt for playoffs. Yeah.

and I'll do it right here on the show. Because it was on our last show that I made a comment in talking about Daniel Wheelan and in trying to tease the feature story that I wrote on him, that that is on our website. You can go find it if you'd still like to read it. But I made the passing comment that Daniel Wheeler went to a small school in California. Okay, no, no, wait, wait, listen, listen, listen. Because I took a couple of days off this last weekend,

I disconnected. I disappeared quite frankly for a couple of days, and then I came back and I read a defense of that line from the last unscripted show that you put an insider inbox. It was a reader named William from Colorado. I run into the fire here, Mike, and

I appreciate him pointing this out. But the reason and what you said is that obviously you see Davis, which is where Daniel Wheelan went, is it is not a small school because it has forty thousand students, but it's an FCS school, it's not an FBS, it's not a Power five conference, and I appreciate you providing that defense for me. What I need to clarify, though, is what actually what actually happened in my brain when I said small school in California, I got and this is the

honest truth. I got the school for Daniel Wheelan and long snapper Matt Orzick mixed up Pacific because Orzick went to Azusa Pacific, which is a school in California that has I believe ten thousand students, and half of those are grad students. It's only like five thousand undergraduate students. That's where he played his college football, and I got it mixed up with Wheelan, who also played at a school in California, not a small school, but an FCS school.

So I should have just said, if I had had it right, I would have said that Daniel Wheelan went to an FCS school and not a Power five school. The small school line was actually a mistake on my part because I got his school mixed up with his long snappers, with Orza going to a Zusa Pacific. So William from Colorado. I appreciate, I appreciate you bringing that line to my attention, and I appreciate my colleagues defense and insider inbox of me. But I needed to set

the record straight right here. So hopefully William is listening or watching this show and the clarification has been made.

br Hatcher when he was here in camp. Like you get these guys that aren't like from the big Power five schools, that get an opportunity, and certainly from Wheland if you had any chance to check out the story yet, be sure to do that because he has an incredible story, yes, and such a little part of it is actually his background from Ireland. I mean, they's just the things that he's done to make his dream come true here and obviously you hope for the best for the kid.

thank you for tuning in everybody. We will see you next time. Mm hmm