Chicago Bears: 3 Lessons learned vs. Packers in Week 1

The Chicago Bears opened the 2019 seasons by losing to the hated Green Bay Packers. Here are three lessons learned from the game.

The 2019 NFL season arrived as the Chicago Bears hosted the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night. In a low-scoring game, the Bears took another loss, this time 10-3, to their hated rivals. The Packers’ defense was suffocating and surprisingly did everything right to complement their offense.

The Packers are a team that is the reverse of the Bears. While Chicago leans on its defense and needs the offense to do just enough to win, the Packers lean on their offense and need their defense to do just enough.

Well, on this night the Packers used their defense to shut down Mitchell Trubisky and the Bears offense. The Bears could not get anything done. On 12 series played, the Bears got a field goal, turned the ball over on downs twice, had an interception (by former Bears safety Adrian Amos) and eight punts.

Interestingly, however, the Bears outgained the Packers (254 yards to 213 yards), and Trubisky threw for more yards than Aaron Rodgers (208 yards to 166 yards). Trubisky just wasn’t able to make the key play and made a terrible, fatal error late in the game.

Aside from the first drive, the Packers had in the second quarter in which they went 74 yards on four plays in 1:35, Rodgers and the Packers were as bad on offense as the Bears. In fact, the Packers had -12 yards of offense in the first quarter.

At several points during the game, the crowd booed the offense as it came off the field so that Pat O’Donnell could punt once again. I think he’ll need the next ten days off to get his leg to get back to normal.

Remember, however, this is just the first game, and the Bears lost their first game last season as well. They can work on what went wrong (they have those 10 days to get it together) and get things together like they did last season.

In the meantime, here are three lessons we learned from this game.