On the one hand, I expected the Packers to get thrashed tonight, but they played better than I expected, at least in the first half.
But, giving up 25 points in the fourth quarter, and completely collapsing like that, is even more frustrating.
I’m surprised by this. The Packers have been trouncing the Bears this year. The Bears barely eked out an unlikely victory in their second meeting. And the Bears barely eked out a win tonight.
It seems the Bears are made for the second half of the game and the Packers are all about the first half. Not sure why the Packers get worse in the second half. (look at the scoring…something changed between the first and second half)
Wow. WOW! Maybe best game of the year.
GB kicker may need some time on this one. 4 missed points while Bears get 25!
Go, BIRDS, and go Jags!
No doubt this game is one for the history books. Very exciting.
Weirdly though the Bears have had more than a few comeback victories this year.
One or maybe two might be luck but they keep doing it. Really lucky or some special juju we can’t define?
You really shouldn’t be.
The Packers had lost four straight to end the regular season, and even if you set aside the Vikings loss (where the Packers had nothing to play for, and pulled most of their starters), they had looked flat for the past month. The injury bug had bit them hard, and they haven’t been finishing games well for much of the season.
I only sort-of watched the game (mostly via the video embedded in this thread). I stopped around 10 CST. I had a feeling that Packers would blow it - I’m glad I stopped while they were still ahead.
Seems to be a pattern and not just this season – The Packers get a good start but fall at the end.
So I’m done for football this season.
Brian
While I went to bed after Green Bay’s final touchdown with 6 minutes to go (and I don’t have Prime {anymore} so could only follow on one of the Gameday feeds). 25 final quarter points given up, DAMN.
This is my first time with Prime Video Powered By Totally Useless Stats (and an annoying pop up statistician).
Man if all football decided to go to that, I’m done. It’s like watching those old vibrator football games. I could never tell who had the ball, and missed all the subtleties of the play. Since I recorded it on NFL network, I couldn’t “hit down twice” to see the real game.
Speaking of the NFL Network, their scheduled time for the game started with 40(!) minutes of analysis of the game that those watching most likely hadn’t seen! Spoiler alert! I managed to avert my eyes, but geeeze! Why do that! Then they had to cut whole chunks out of the game to fit their time slot. You have a channel dedicated to football - who cares how long it runs?
But those “next gen stats”, useless. At one point in the first quarter, they said “probability of Bears winning: 9%”. It was annoying at the time, because, duh, it’s NFL, anything can happen. Then it did.
But my favorite useless stat was “predicted defense, man or zone coverage.” Um, isn’t that all theire is? Well except for the Packers’ fourth quarter “lay down and die” defense, so maybe.
I was more annoyed by far at the stupid Amazon broadcast than the Packers’ play.
I stopped following the Bears-Packers game in the fourth quarter, thinking that only the Ravens could blow a lead like that. Has there ever been a season with so many big leads blown late and games coming down to the last play? I don’t believed the games are rigged, but can understand why some people seem to believe they could be.
Just to be clear, you didn’t watch the game live on Prime? Rather, you recorded the replay, which was shown on NFL Network?
Because the live feed on Prime didn’t show all those pop-up stats to which you have referred. Rather, it’s very much like a game on any other network, like CBS or Fox.
There is an option to watch the alternative stream, Prime Vision with NextGen Stats, which is probably what you recorded on NFL Network. I’ve never watched it. And now I probably never will.
Yes. We were out during the live game, so we figured we’d just record the NFL network rebroadcast. We’ve done it in the past, and we know they’ll edit for time, but they never did it like this, with the “watching from the cheap sets in the end zone” 
view before. This was all new to me. (We have watched live Amazon feed before, so if they’ve been doing this for a while, I completely missed it.)
I guess then my real beef is with NFL network.
And the Packers.
That does not bode well for the Bears if they could only barely sneak out a win against such a pathetic team (given how you tell it).
Here is a highlights video queued to when you said (if it doesn’t work then jump to 12:52 in the video):
I could take or leave the player-tracking / tracing graphics and the extra stats (some of them are interesting) but the above and behind camera angle is way better. It should’ve become the standard as soon as widescreen TV is common. When you watch from the normal sideline camera you can hardly see passing plays develop at all, most of the receivers are off the screen.
I wonder if you’re uncomfortable because it’s different because it objectively shows more of how the play is developing than the standard sideline view.
Man, I cannot get a handle on Caleb Williams. Some games he’s a complete stud; some games he’s a complete dud. Some games, like last night, he’s both (dud in the first half; stud in the second). There doesn’t seem to be any in between.
Bears were super lucky to get that win, after making some very questionable 4th down calls. Kudos to them, though, for not giving up and making some excellent half-time adjustments.
No, I don’t like it because I can’t follow the ball. Maybe if they took out the circles and arrows and dotted lines and player names, maybe.
Is it simply that Johnson (and by extension the team) is very good at
?
I honestly think this is a team that can, even against the Seahawks next week, win or lose with equal probability any given Sunday, having it come down to one or two critical plays in last two drives.
I’m imagining the Seahawks will be heavily favored, but boy, I would not be shocked at an upset.
While Seattle is the #1 seed in the NFC, the Bears are the #2 seed. They will host another game next weekend. Their opponent will be either the Eagles or Rams.
If the Eagles beat the Niners today, the Bears will host the Eagles, and the Rams go to Seattle. If the Niners win today, they will play at Seattle, while the Rams go to Chicago.
I misunderstood a graphic last night I guess …
I’m not sure what the Rams were doing with Blake Corum in the first half. Pretty sure they started him, and then featured him heavily all half. Kyren Williams spelled him a couple times and looked clearly better. Then Williams was featured more in the second half. Not sure if they were trying to keep Williams fresh for the second half or for the rest of the playoffs.
Early in the Packers game they were talking about Matthew Golden being notable for being a WR drafted in the first round but not catching a touchdown pass all season. I’m not sure if they said it was only the 2nd time ever this had happened (that seems unlikely to me) or just the first time it had happened since…Kadarius Toney. Ouch. If you’re a wide receiver, you really don’t want to be grouped with Toney.
On a personal note, my experience with Comcast was quite poor. I started watching the early game via DVR, and then as I was approaching halftime it reset to the beginning of the recording. I’ve had this happen a few times, but it was particularly annoying with the “Smart Resume” feature making it damn near impossible to fast forward from the beginning of the game to halftime. So I had to look up how to turn off Smart Resume and then exit the recording and restart it.
Then in the 4th quarter my screen went full red with an error message that said something along the lines of “Error: Video alarm detected.” I try to fast forward, figuring it would be a few minutes, but 20 minutes of fast forwarding was still just red screen. Meaning that recording was utterly ruined. I finally gave up in disgust and switched over to to NFL+ Premium to watch it there.