The Chicago Bears held a 23-game lead over the Green Bay Packers in the NFL’s oldest rivalry before Brett Favre (4) and Aaron Rodgers (left) combined to 47-15 against their oldest rival.
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Mike Ditka and his Chicago Bears were on a roll.
Game after game, year after year, Ditka’s Bears were dominating the Green Bay Packers in the NFL’s oldest rivalry.
“We all understood the significance of beating Green Bay,” Ditka said in a 2012 interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “No matter what the records were, we always wanted to beat the Packers and vice versa. It was for pride and bragging rights.”
And in the early 1990s, Ditka’s Bears were doing all the bragging.
Between 1985-1991, Ditka coached the Bears to a 12-2 record against Green Bay. And suddenly, Chicago’s lead in a series that dates back to 1921 had ballooned to 80-57-6.
Then, two things more than any others completely reshaped the NFL’s version of Ohio State-Michigan:
• On Feb. 11, 1992, the Packers traded for Brett Favre.
• On April 23, 2005, Green Bay selected Aaron Rodgers with the 24th pick of the NFL Draft.
Thanks in large part to those two, the Packers are 108-96-6 today — a remarkable 35-game swing in just 33 years.
These two bitter foes are back at it Sunday at 3:25 p.m. (CST) when Green Bay (8-3-1) hosts Chicago (9-3) in a showdown for first place in the NFC North.
It’s the first time since the 2013 regular season finale that these teams have met in December, or later, with first place in the division at stake. Green Bay won that day at Chicago’s Soldier Field, 33-28, on a 48-yard TD pass from Rodgers to Randall Cobb with just 38 seconds left.
“I think there was going to be a lot of juice to it, regardless, but the top spot is where we want to be,” Packers wide receiver Christian Watson said. “Really, we’re just starting with the NFC North. They’re at the top of the NFC North right now, so we’re coming for that spot.”
The Bears were at the top of this rivalry for decades before the Packers altered things in the early-1990s.
Chicago went 7-1-2 in the first 10 games these teams played in the 1920s. Green Bay took a slight lead in the early 1930s, but the Bears grabbed control of the rivalry and held a 48-26-6 lead when Vince Lombardi arrived in 1959.
Lombardi went 13-5 against Chicago during his nine seasons as the Packers’ head coach. Green Bay also went 8-2 against the Bears the first five years Lombardi was gone and pulled within 55-47-6 in the overall series.
But Bart Starr (7-11), Forrest Gregg (1-7) and Lindy Infante (2-6) all struggled to beat Chicago. And by the end of the 1991 season, Ditka and the Bears held a 23-game edge in the series.
“I look at it from a broader perspective,” said Mark Murphy, the Packers’ team president from 2007-2025. “In the 80s especially, the Bears were dominating us. But in the larger picture, things swing back and forth.”
Boy, have they swung in the last 33 years.
Favre went 2-2 his first four games against Chicago, then led the Packers to a remarkable 10-game winning streak from 1994-’98. Favre had many memorable wins against the Bears, but perhaps the game that summed up his toughness and skill level more than any other came in Week 11, 1995.
Favre had a severely sprained left ankle and took just six snaps in practice that week. He then went out and threw five touchdowns in a critical 35-28 win over Chicago.
“His ankle was the size of my thigh,” former Packer LeRoy Butler said of Favre. “What he did was incredible.”
Favre’s record against Chicago jumped to 20-4 by the end of the 2003 season, before the Bears went 6-2 against Green Bay in Favre’s final four seasons as a Packer. Still, Favre went 22-10 against the Bears and pulled the Packers within 90-79-6.
“As (former Green Bay coach) Mike Holmgren used to say, the worm will turn,” Favre said late on his Green Bay tenure. “However many games I’ve played against the Bears, for the most part we were the better team. And I think that’s it in a nutshell. Throughout my years of playing against the Bears, it’s been that way.”
Amazingly, Rodgers took it up a notch.
Rodgers went a remarkable 25-5 against Chicago — including a 12-1 mark in his last 13 games against the Bears. Rodgers knocked off the Packers’ oldest rival in the 2010 NFC Championship Game, beat them with the division on the line in the 2013 regular season finale, and got the better of them in every type of situation imaginable.
“Little Green Bay was getting beat up for a long time by our foes to the South,” Rodgers said. “And then Favrey showed up and we closed the gap and then we’ve overtaken them. It’s nice.”
When the Packers won in Chicago, 24-14, in 2021, Rodgers ran towards the corner of an endzone and told Bears’ fans: “All my f—ing life, I own you. I still own you. I still own you.”
He was right.
Only two quarterbacks in NFL history have at least 25 wins against a single franchise with a better winning percentage than Rodgers did against Chicago.
• Tom Brady went 36-3 against Buffalo (.923).
• Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger was 26-3 against Cleveland (.897).
“We’ve had a good run,” Rodgers said in 2021. “We’ve had the upper hand for the last stretch with Favre and I. It’s been battles, though. It’s still a rivalry, still some great back and forth games.”
Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur has also played a large role in this rivalry, going 11-0 against the Bears before the Packers dropped a 24-22 home game to Chicago in the 2024 season finale. Current Green Bay quarterback Jordan Love is off to a 3-1 start against the Bears, and even former backup Brett Hundley beat the Bears in 2017 when Rodgers was sidelined with a broken collarbone.
No two men, though, did more than Favre or Rodgers to tilt the scales in Green Bay’s direction.
“Having this run with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers has been huge,” Murphy said. “It’s pretty incredible.”
Packer Nation would certainly agree.