The hardest part for the Bears is being in the same hemisphere with the Packers.
It’s a fact a Chicagoan can get to Green Bay in 3œ hours of pasture-gazing and barn-counting, up Interstate 43, through Milwaukee to Belgium and Cleveland and Denmark (real Wisconsin towns, folks).
The trouble starts at quarterback — the position that rules the NFL, the only one that, unadorned, can change games by itself.
As reference, remember that as great as Dick Butkus was, he couldn’t propel the Bears into a single postseason game during his career. Why? He was only a middle linebacker.
As we know, the Packers dismantled the Bears once again Sunday — their 10th consecutive victory in the alleged ‘‘rivalry’’ — and it was the quarterback comparison, Jordan Love vs. Justin Fields, that drew the most attention.
The Packers’ Love passed for 316 yards and two touchdowns, while the Bears’ Fields passed for 148 yards and no touchdowns. There were various factors involved in the disparity, but remember that Love’s scoring passes were caught by a fifth-round rookie receiver named Dontayvion Wicks. Anybody remember game-planning for Wicks?
The quarterback difference between the teams has become epic and — let’s just call it what it is — embarrassing. For the Bears. And the crack is wide and growing, as in a warming glacier.
Consider that the Bears’ all-time season passing leader is Erik Kramer, with 3,838 yards and 29 touchdowns in 1995. The Packers have had 27 seasons in which a quarterback threw for more yards than that. They’ve had 17 seasons in which a quarterback threw more touchdown passes than Kramer’s 29.
This is incredible. It defies chance and hints at conspiracy or, more likely, embedded incompetence.
Think about it. Twenty-seven seasons in which a Packers quarterback threw for more yards than any Bears quarterback has in the 104 years of the team’s existence. Twenty-seven times.
And it wasn’t all Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, either. Don Majkowski did it. So did Lynn Dickey. And so, too, did Love this season, finishing with 4,159 yards.
Now that the NFL has gone to a 17-game regular season, you might have thought Fields would break one of Kramer’s two records. The Rams’ Puka Nacua set the rookie record for receptions and receiving yards in the 17th game Sunday, for instance. But no.
And remember that nobody considered the Packers to be a great team in the preseason. They started 3-6. Love had sat on the bench for most of his first two seasons behind Rodgers, and he wasn’t so terrific early in 2023, his first year as a starter.
But now he has led the 9-8 Packers into the playoffs, and you could say he, ahem, ‘‘owns’’ the Bears his whole bleeping life.
The Bears have the first pick in the draft in the spring, and there are quarterbacks out there, waiting, wondering, perhaps fearing. One might be the next Patrick Mahomes or C.J. Stroud, star quarterbacks the Bears weren’t interested in. Or more duds. First-pick quarterbacks in previous drafts include Terry Bradshaw, John Elway and Peyton Manning. But they also include JaMarcus Russell, Tim Couch and Jeff George.
Do the Bears go for it? Or do they trade that top pick to somebody who desperately wants USC’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye, then draft other needed position players?
Some analysts think trading the No. 1 pick and moving down to take a stud left tackle or athletic pass rusher, then snaring a lower-level quarterback such as Oregon’s Bo Nix or Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, is the path.
But whoever ends up as the Bears’ quarterback next season, be it fourth-year man Fields or somebody new, that guy must confront the bizarre and humiliating wall presented by the Packers’ quarterbacking legacy. In its way, it’s like that infernal goat curse that always came up whenever we were counting the years until the Cubs could win their next World Series.
What does Kramer think about the franchise passing-yardage and touchdown records he set all those years ago? Isn’t it astounding they still stand?
‘‘Hmm, I never thought about it like that,’’ he tells me on the phone.
For the Packers, it would be nothing — especially the yardage total. Twenty-seven times they’ve done it. I remind Kramer.
‘‘I guess so,’’ he says, thinking about it. ‘‘Certainly by now . . . yeah, I am amazed.’’
Aren’t we all.
