GREEN BAY, Wis. -- There's still no better cure for a classic case of Bearsitis -- that inflamed sense of provincial football optimism -- than a trip to Lambeau Field. Even in the Ben Johnson Era.
And on that note, I'm calling for a boycott of all "Green Bay sucks" chants at Chicago arenas and stadiums until the Bears figure out how to win here more than once a decade.
Yes, Johnson and company beat the Packers twice last season when it really mattered: late in the season and in the playoffs. But both wins were at home, and they were because of Caleb Williams' late-game magic.
In a road game in this rivalry without Williams, the Bears' 31-7 loss looked a lot like most of the other games I've covered at Chicago's northernmost haunted house.
A day after the White Sox struck out a collective 21 times to bow out of the postseason, the Bears whiffed more prodigiously with this performance. After the game, there were no leading questions about winning for "Da Coach," Mike Ditka, who passed away at 86 on Friday. You can't dedicate a game like this to a coach like that.
It was clear from the beginning that the Packers, rare home underdogs to Chicago, were more inspired, disciplined and explosive. The final score was not indicative of the domination we saw on both sides of the field. The Bears were never in this game.
"They played fast, they played well, it seemed like they really wanted it," Bears quarterback Tyson Bagent said of the Green Bay defense.
The Packers offense was the same. Jordan Love completed 25 of 31 passes for 367 yards and two touchdowns. He kept going deep like a drunk college kid playing Madden. Christian Watson and Matthew Golden combined for 12 catches and 266 receiving yards, and Watson had two touchdowns. Green Bay was up 14-7 at the half, and on the first play of the third quarter, Love hit Watson for a 31-yard gain. Three plays later, on third-and-22, he connected with Watson on a 53-yard touchdown pass. At the end of the third, a Bagent interception quickly turned into another Green Bay touchdown.
After three solid-to-great defensive games in a row -- they gave up 28 points combined to the Vikings, Eagles and Jets -- the Bears looked more like the team that had to win a shootout in Week 1. But there was no Williams to lead it this time.
Despite all the bluster in and around Chicago going into the game, this was the Bears' worst loss at Lambeau, in terms of point differential, since that infamous 55-14 defeat in Marc Trestman's last season, in 2014. It was the fewest points they've scored here since a 10-3 defeat in January 2011.
Johnson is now 2-2 against Green Bay. Now that's amazingly just one win shy of tying the total of the four coaches who preceded him, but this loss should sting nonetheless. He's not trying to be better than Trestman, John Fox, Matt Nagy and Matt Eberflus. His goals are bigger.
But the notion that Johnson is such a genius that he can win with any ol' quarterback was proven incorrect Sunday. He needs Williams back ASAP.
Williams did some early morning pregame work as he tries to return from his hamstring injury. After next week's game in Atlanta, the Bears are at home against New England on a Thursday before a long layoff and a Monday night game in Seattle. You'd assume he'd be back by one of those games. That's the hope anyway.
In the meantime, the Cult of the Bears Backup QB might want to re-evaluate its beliefs.
Bagent and Case Keenum played well enough to beat the Eagles and the Jets. But against the Bears' ancestral rival, they combined for 195 passing yards, no touchdowns and four of the team's five turnovers.
Bagent was pulled after his second interception to see if Keenum could spark the team, but he threw an interception on a fourth-down play in the red zone on his first series in the fourth quarter, and lost a fumble late in the game. Those mistakes were the product of trying to make something out of nothing in a blowout. Bagent, getting his second consecutive start, didn't look right all day.
"Obviously, super disappointed," Bagent said. "But I really can't look any further than the mirror. Got to get better, got to take it face on, see where I need to get better, see where we need to be better as a team."
Johnson was also looking in that postgame mirror of self-discovery. The Bears went 4-for-14 on third down (and 2-for-5 on fourth), couldn't establish the run without Kyle Monangai (turf toe) and the offense generally didn't pose much of a threat.
"It's one of those things when you can't get in a rhythm offensively like today, I've got to look at myself first. What do we have in, did we prepare the right way and certainly what the play calls were in real time also," he said. " You know, they had a nice plan."
A game is won and lost on the field, but it's pretty clear the Packers are tired of hearing about the great Ben Johnson and the upstart Bears, who won the NFC North last season despite going 2-4 in it.
"They do a whole lot of weird stuff," Green Bay linebacker Zaire Franklin told reporters. "Since I been here, they do a whole lot of stuff that (shows) they (are) worried about us. We worried about ourselves. Hopefully, they learn to stop dissing us. Real talk."
The Bears won't get a chance to deliver some real talk of their own against the Packers until a rematch on Christmas at Soldier Field. That game starts a closing run of three straight against NFC North foes. Between now and then, Chicago has a lot of work to do on itself.
"It's a long season," Keenum said. "There's a lot you find out about yourself in this part of the season, when you're kind of becoming the team that you're going to be. Your identity is getting forged, sometimes through fire, and it was in fire today. So we'll see what kind of identity we have coming out of the back end of this thing."
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
