There’s nothing quite like NFL Week 1, is there?

After months of roster additions, subtractions, and schematic changes, the NFL’s 32 Teams will finally take the field this weekend and show us who’s here to content, who’s here to pretend, and everything else in between.

But between you and me, 15 of the 16 NFL games scheduled for this weekend might as well not exist — the Chicago Bears host the Green Bay Packers this Sunday at 3:25PM in the first game since Aaron Rodgers’ departure and it’s the only game on my mind.

How are the Bears going to attack the Packers’ defense? What are the Packers looking to do on offense? Moreover, who’s going to win? Nick Whalen & I put together a hell of a game preview on today’s episode of Bear With Us, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts in print. Let’s get into it.

Before the Teams Take the Field…

Keep an eye out for the Packers’ official Friday injury report. Explosive Packers WR Christian Watson was listed as a practice non-participant on Wednesday (hamstring injury), and if either he or WR Romeo Doubs (DNP — hamstring injury) can’t play on Sunday Jordan Love will be left throwing to rookies in his first 2023 NFL start.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t — with TE Tyler Davis already on IR, Love’s Sunday receiving weapons could consist of:

• Rookie TE Luke Musgrave
• Rookie TE Tucker Kraft
• Rooke WR Jayden Reed
• 2nd year (7th round pick) WR Samori Toure
• Rookie WR Dontayvion Wicks, who was limited on Wednesday’s practice with a hamstring injury

The Packers also need OT David Bakhtiari (knee) and EDGE Rashan Gary (knee) to play big roles on Sunday’s game despite injury limitations, which may be difficult for each veteran based on what their bodies can do and where each player is within their recovery timeline.

If I had to guess, I expect one of the Packers’ 2nd year WRs to make it to gameday (likely Doubs, as his hamstring injury occurred before Green Bay’s 3rd preseason game), but the absence of even one 2nd year WR puts tremendous pressure on the Packers’ rookies to carry the offensive load on Sunday. And, as we’ve learned, featuring rookies can be a scary prospect.

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In my 15 years as a Bears fan, I have seen the Chicago Bears sweep the Green Bay Packers once.

One single season. Across Fifteen years.

Since Aaron Rodgers took over at Quarterback, Green Bay has consistently throttled Chicago — the Packers have won a staggering 26 out of 31 contests and have left the Bears with a lower win percentage vs Green Bay in that span (16.12%) than Chicago finished with in a last-place 2022 season (17.65%).

As a matter of fact, Chicago enters this weekend’s game with two concurrent losing streaks against the Green Bay Packers:

• The Bears are 0-8 in their last 8 games against Green Bay
• The Bears are also 0-8 in their last 8 September matchups against the Packers

Thus, if you’ve ever felt like Chicago simply couldn’t beat Aaron Rodgers, you were right.

But Chicago doesn’t face Aaron Rodgers this weekend.

After more than a decade of dominance, a new face now leads Green Bay. Jordan Love has taken the reigns at Quarterback, and he brings with him a wildly young offensive skill core with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

There are virtually no expectations for this Packers team, save that the young guns develop on offense, but that’s not to say they’re without talent — with high-pedigree draft picks like Christian Watson, Luke Musgrave, and Jayden Reed, the 2023 Packers are a dangerous team. But, as of the time of writing this article, they’re also as weak as they’re likely to be this year.

The Packers’ starting CB2, Eric Stokes, will open the 2023 season on the PUP list. Tyler Davis, GB’s veteran TE3, will start the season on IR and force rookie Luke Musgrave into a starting role early.

2nd year possession receiver Romeo Doubs tweaked his hamstring and missed the Packers’ final preseason game. Star EDGE rusher Rashan Gary tore his ACL in 2022’s Week 9 and, though he’s slated to play in Week 1, will assuredly lack some measure of explosion for at least a few more months.

This Packers team is young, untested, and banged up. If Chicago can’t beat them now, when will they?

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This is not in bad faith. This is not a vain attempt at schadenfreude.

I dove into Jordan Love’s film over the last few months and came to a resounding conclusion: Jordan Love is better than some Bears fans want to believe, and he exhibits a lot of the hallmark traits of a good West Coast quarterback.

He’s got a great sense of timing as a dropback passer, hitting the back of his drop and delivering the ball well with a big arm that lets him attack deep out routes as well as the quick release needed to stay efficient on timing routes over the middle. His years on the bench shine through via quick decision-making, and he clearly trusts his offensive system enough to attack throwing windows that other young QBs simply won’t attack.

In effect, Jordan Love has the tools to be a solid NFL Quarterback, but he’s got a problem — the offensive pass-catchers Green Bay has put around him are so young that I struggle to imagine the Packers, a team that may have two first round picks in the QB-heavy 2024 draft, sticking with Love past the 2024 bridge extension he just signed.

Green Bay’s biggest issue is that they purged all of their offensive ‘glue guys’ at once this offseason:

• Allen Lazard was a key run-blocker and the primary X-receiver within the Packers’ system
• Robert Tonyan was a reliable weapon in late-down situations and one of the twin engines of the Packers 12-personnel looks
• Marcedes Lewis was far and away the best run and pass blocking TE on the roster (and the other twin engine of 12-personnel)
• And Randall Cobb, though only a role player, knew the Packers’ system well and connected with Rodgers constantly on key downs

These 4 veterans accounted for:

• 44% of the Packers’ 2022 receiving yardage
• 41.5% of their 2022 targets
• 198 total games of Packers experience

And in their departure Matt LaFleur said goodbye to the final 4 skill players he had built the Packers’ offense with when he joined the team in 2019.

Replacing that production & experience wouldn’t be an easy feat for any organization, but the Packers chose to fill the vets’ shoes in as extreme a way as you could’ve imagined — they replaced all 4 players with rookies, and there’s no set of players more inconsistent in the NFL than 1st year starters.

I like a lot of the players Green Bay selected in their 2023 draft class, namely Michigan State WR Jayden Reed and South Dakota State University TE Tucker Kraft, but every young player is going to go through rookie growing pains within next year’s Packers offense and when the pass-catchers make mistakes I think Jordan Love will (unfairly) get handed the blame.

Did Reed run the wrong route? No, Jordan Love just didn’t throw an accurate ball.

Should that route have been run at 7 yards rather than the 5.5 yards Musgrave cut at? No, Jordan Love just missed him.

Every offensive failure will somehow bubble back to the 1st year starter replacing a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and at the end of the year Green Bay fans will ‘suddenly’ realize that packaging their 2024 first round picks together for a new rookie Quarterback makes more financial sense than waiting until the end of the 2024 season to either draft a new rookie QB or extend extending Love again.

I walk through all of this and more in the video below, complete with some of the best film-work I’ve ever done at this point in my career — if you’ve got a few minutes on this fine Friday, I highly recommend it! But if not, I’d love to hear your take all the same.

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I don’t know about you, but I loathe uncertainty.

Will Justin Fields take the next step this year?

Can any of the Bears’ young DL step forward and save their pass rush?

Chicago will finally beat the Packers on Week 1, right?

Questions like this eat at me whenever I think about the 2023 season, and for good reason — each question’s answer is a massive domino that could swing Chicago’s year.

But as excited as I am that the Bears are back in pads today at Halas Hall, I want to caution everyone from drawing any hard conclusions from these football practices — after all, Training Camp isn’t the indicator we tend to want to make it, for better and for worse.

Us fans, so starved for football after 7 long months of offseason, want to take every video clip and use it as proof of QB progress, the skill of a rookie WR, or even the efficacy of a Defensive Back, but in reality these football practices are so full of chaotic experimentation, new installs of offensive/defensive terminology, coaches pushing boundaries, and rapid chemistry-building on both sides of the ball that mistakes become common (even intended) and lead to sloppy practices like the Bears had just yesterday.

To some, Fields throwing multiple INTs in a practice may seem like cause for alarm. On that note, take a look at early reports from the 2021 Cincinnati Bengals’ first day in pads and see what beat reporters had to say about the soon-to-be AFC Champions:

woooooof https://t.co/uhLNcoVAWy pic.twitter.com/ZPyjftScBk

— charles (“you look good” – andy reid) mcdonald (@FourVerts) August 4, 2021

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The Chicago Bears shouldn’t be favored to win the NFC North, but they certainly have a shot to take what is now a weak division. The Lions are the favorites, and rightfully so, but Detroit missed a major opportunity to improve at key positions and further separate themselves from the rest of the division. The Minnesota Vikings are the defending champions, but their limp to the finish line brings up many questions. And the Packers, well, where do we start?

These are things Ryan Poles was surely looking at when he told The Athletic the team should contend for the NFC North. Here’s a quick snapshot at each of the teams and why the Bears could top them.

Detroit Lions

There’s a lot to like about the Detroit Lions but that can be found all over the internet. In short, the Lions had a top-five offense in 2022 and their defense allowed a hair over 20 points per game in the second half of the year. They finished 8-2 with convincing wins over the Vikings and Packers.

But there are issues with the Lions that are largely going ignored.

• They need quarterback Jared Goff to continue playing at a level at which he has not previously played.
• They need him to do this while being shorthanded at wide receiver. Losing DJ Chark wasn’t supposed to be significant because Jameson Williams was going to fill the void, stretching the field vertically, but Williams has been suspended for six games for gambling. Without Chark’s speed on the field — he missed six games — the powerful Lions offense averaged fewer than 20 points per game last year.
• The team made considerable investments in the running back position, but was that really a weakness last year? Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift combined for more than 1,600 rushing yards, with an average of 4.45 per carry and had 22 rushing touchdowns. Swift caught 48 passes for 389 yards and three more touchdowns. If they upgraded, it’s hard to see them being more productive.
• There’s also the matter of Ben Johnson. There’s no question that he is a bright offensive mind, but now teams will have a full season of work to study and figure out how to stop him.

We can comfortably assume Detroit’s defense will improve, after being bottom-five in both scoring and yardage last year. How much is a bit of a mystery, though. They made some improvements in the secondary but spent a first-round pick on an inside linebacker — a position that wasn’t a strength, but also not necessarily a weakness.

On paper, the Lions should be favored to win the NFC North. But it isn’t hard to see why that might not happen.

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