CHICAGO — Aaron Rodgers to Brandon Bostick. Touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers to Andrew Quarless. Touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers to Jordy Nelson. Another touchdown.
Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers.
Touchdown.
Touchdown.
Touchdown.
That glowing scoreboard taunt seemed to burn into the retinas of every member of the Chicago Bears organization: 42-0 Green Bay Packers.
Six Rodgers touchdown passes.
At halftime!
Do you remember that night, Chicago? The embarrassment. The humiliation. The despondency.
Six Novembers ago, the Bears went to Green Bay during an already-wayward season and displayed on a prime-time stage just how broken they really were.
WBBM-AM sideline reporter Zach Zaidman stopped coach Marc Trestman on his way into the locker room after the second quarter and, grasping for anything, wondered how the Bears would even begin to regroup.
"We're not a good football team right now," Trestman confessed. "So that's the baseline for where we're going to start the second half. We played 30 minutes of terrible football in all three phases. And we've got to just start over. That's all we can do."
Somewhere inside a luxury box at Lambeau Field, Bears chairman George McCaskey and team president Ted Phillips were staggered. And stewing. Virginia McCaskey, as we'd learn from her son eight weeks later during a front office and coaching staff detonation, was "pissed off."
On that grave night in Green Bay, the Bears hit rock bottom and passed the point of no return on their way there. A plunge toward last place had accelerated and deep conversations about major organizational changes quickly grew more serious.
It felt awful — all of it — for everyone involved.
So be very careful this week in asking "How bad can it really get?" This season's Bears are still frantically searching for answers, still attempting to gather themselves before their latest skid becomes a collapse.
And as they head back to Green Bay this weekend, they are coming off a bye week, reeling from a four-game losing streak and still desperately trying to fix a malfunctioning offense that's arguably more discombobulated now than it has been at any point in the past 15 years.
Matt Nagy and his coaching staff remain confident they found things during their bye week self-scouting mission that can, at the very least, help boost the offensive production. But the Bears will be testing their latest troubleshooting methods under the white-hot spotlight of "Sunday Night Football." With the rest of the league watching closely — and Rodgers challenging them to keep up — the challenge will be daunting.
Furthermore, in recent history, facing the Packers in prime time has rarely been a feel-good experience for the Bears or their tormented fan base. Over the previous 20 seasons, the Bears are 5-12 against the Packers in prime time. And many of those losses have been harrowing experiences, fully illuminating the team's biggest flaws and most extreme failures.
