Chicago Bears are who the Packers thought they were

For years, Green Bay Packers fans thought that they were the model franchise in the NFL. They were wrong, and now the Chicago Bears are who the Packers thought they were.

There’s no denying that Aaron Rodgers has had a great career — particularly against the Chicago Bears. He is a first-ballot Hall of Famer and will forever be remembered as one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the Green Bay Packers, at the very least.

However, as a recent Bleacher Report article revealed, Rodgers’ tenure with the Packers has been tainted and constrained by egos, grudges and a total lack of chemistry throughout the organization.

The Packers were regularly seen as Super Bowl favorites, but as the 2019 league season begins, Rodgers and Company enter the season with only one ring to show for nine playoff appearances since 2007.

The Packers thought that they had it all. A championship defense, a quarterback with elite leadership ability and a coach destined to go down as a Hall of Fame coach.

Fast forward to 2019 and Rodgers enters his 35th year of life with a new coach and as many rings on his finger as an 88-year-old married man.

Alas, the Packers weren’t as dominant as they thought. After the Bears sent the Packers home and destroyed their slim playoff hopes in Week 15, it was obvious that the tables had turned.

As the late great coach Dennis Green said, “The Bears are who we thought they were!”

Now, it’s more like the Bears are who the Packers thought they were.

The Monsters of the Midway are primed for long-term success. With Mitch Trubisky looking like a franchise quarterback, Matt Nagy showing himself as an elite head coach and Ryan Pace already proving himself as evidenced by his 2018 Sporting News NFL Executive of the Year nod, the Bears are stacked all-around.

Even better, the Bears have something that the Packers lacked for much of their dominant years: DEFENSE.

Although the Packers have long had a respectable offense thanks to Rodgers’s uh . . . leadership? The Green Bay defense has struggled to perform at an elite level.

Those struggles have been amplified as the offense has failed to carry the Packers as Rodgers declines with age.

Not to mention, the Bears don’t have to deal with some weird hip thrust when their quarterback does something that he’s proud of.

Seriously, what is that?

Granted, the only way the Bears truly surpass the Green and Gold is by winning multiple championships. They certainly haven’t passed them . . . yet.

But with a bright, modest quarterback, a front office that has done a stellar job of assembling a Super Bowl contender thus far and some very solid moves during the 2019 offseason, the Bears could certainly become the model franchise in the NFL in a number of years.

The Bears already have a prolific offense and one of the most terrifying defenses in the game.

Now they just need a friggin kicker who won’t doink the pigskin out of every piece of steel in the Chicago skyline.

Sorry Green Bay. It’s Chicago’s turn for relevance.

Except we’ll do it with a quarterback who’s not hated by half of his team.