It has been a minute since a regular-season game in December between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears meant so much. The Bears have seemingly righted their ship after several years of struggle, and Green Bay appears poised for a postseason run.
At Lambeau Field this Sunday, the battle for supremacy in the NFC North will commence with first place in the division on the line.
The Bears currently lead the division with a 9-3 record, followed by the Packers, who own an 8-3-1 mark and trail by just one-half game. There are only five games to go in the 2025 season. The outcome of this installment of the best rivalry in the NFL will speak volumes on how the playoff seedings will shake out in January.
Both teams have earned the right to be considered Super Bowl contenders. Chicago is on a heater, having won nine of their last ten games, and Green Bay has won three straight after some mid-season hiccups.
In order to emerge triumphant, the Packers and the Bears need to follow the recipes that brought them to this point to fidelity.
Green Bay must apply constant pressure on Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams.
The second-year signal-caller has thrived under the guidance of rookie head coach Ben Johnson. After a tumultuous first season, Williams has hit his stride in 2025 because of the stability and faith his boss has provided him.
Part of that stems from Johnson’s innate skill in putting his quarterback in situations in which he can flourish. It also helps that the Bears’ running game is functioning at an extremely high level.
Because teams must respect Chicago’s running game, Williams has had to deal with less pressure this season and has kept plays alive better. He has minimized his mistakes in the face of harassment tremendously compared to last year.
According to Pro Football Focus, Williams shockingly ranks 38th in the league in pressure-to-sack percentage among quarterbacks with 87 or more dropbacks. In other words, the pressure-to-sack rate is the number of sacks a quarterback has taken divided by their total number of pressures.
Over the course of 2024, Williams’ pressure-to-sack rate was 28.4%, but he has cut that by more than half this year to less than 14%. Such an improvement has given the Bears’ offense more chances at sustained drives and controlling the clock.
Keeping Williams upright has paid off dividends this year; he was sacked 68 times as a rookie, compared with just 17 through eleven games this season. He has had time to cook, and he will continue to do so if given time in the pocket.
That’s where Micah Parsons and the rest of the Packers defense comes in.
For Green Bay to leapfrog Chicago in the standings, it must be able to succeed where others have failed: getting to Williams. The Packers feel they are better equipped to do so this year after the mega-signing of Parsons in August, thereby addressing a need from 2024.
Through Week 13, Parsons was second in the league with 67 quarterback pressures, and his 12.5 sacks placed him third in the NFL. He is definitely a game-wrecker, one who will require Johnson to game-plan around him. Lions coach Dan Campbell, whose team gave up ten pressures and 2.5 sacks to Parsons on Thanksgiving Day, acknowledged what coaches around the league have understood all season about the defensive end’s tenacity.
“We know he’s a dynamic player, he’s a dynamic rusher,” he said. “This guy plays hard, he’s got a quick first step, he’s powerful, he’s quick. You see him club the tight end, nudges him, already beats that. Then the tackle engages him, then the slide comes to him, the guard gets on him and he beats both of them. And that’s just it. If your’e going to use that many resources, you have to stop this guy. And he’ll just keep coming.”
The Packers must rattle Williams and consistently get him off his mark. Consistent pressure will ensure Parsons and the other Green Bay defenders will succeed and continue their winning streak at home on Sunday.
The Bears must pound the rock.
If Chicago’s Black Friday 24-15 win at Philadelphia showed anything, it displayed that running the football still produces victories in the NFL–especially in wintery weather. That is exactly the climate they expect to experience when they visit the Packers, and they feel they are built perfectly for it.
The two-headed monster of D’Andre Swift (774 yards) and Kyle Monangai (591 yards) has an outside chance of being just the eighth duo in NFL history to rush for 1,000 yards in the same season. It has not been accomplished since 2019, when the Baltimore Ravens tandem of Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram II turned the trick.
The Bears bulldozed the Eagles’ vaunted front seven to the tune of 281 rushing yards, the most Chicago has amassed in a game since September 30, 1984, against the Cowboys. Monangai gained 130 yards, and Swift added 125. It was the first time since their fabled 1985 season that the Bears had two 100-yard rushers in the same game, but that total was not enough for Monangai.
“Man, 19 away from 300,” he said following the game.
Chicago has averaged 153.8 rushing yards per game thus far in 2025, which is just second to Buffalo (155.7). With the sudden affinity they have for running the football, the wins have followed. Better yards on the ground on first and second downs equals fewer occasions that Williams is put into high-leverage situations on third.
That combination has fans of da Bears believing that their beloved team and savior of a coach can lead them to the promised land in the playoffs. Until then, they will settle for being unwelcome visitors in their archrival’s house.
Sunday’s game marks the 209th time the two blueblood franchises will exchange pleasantries in the regular season, with the Packers holding a 107-95-6 advantage. There have been games within the rivalry that have directly decided playoff berths, but this is the first time in recent memory that division authority hinges on a December matchup.
Who will emerge victorious? That opinion is still too early to formulate. What is for certain is that the team that maintains its upward trends the best–Green Bay’s pressure defense and Chicago’s running prowess–will likely find a way to succeed.
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