A Sunday afternoon in November 1921 is when it all started. The Chicago Bears dominated and won 20-0 against the Packers, but that simply wasn’t enough. Their guard John Taylor threw a sucker punch at Packers‘ tackle Howard Buck and broke his nose. That’s the moment when one of the oldest rivalries in the NFL was conceived. Today, it has been more than a century since this series has been bubbling with bitterness, intensity, and animosity, but that seems to be fading slowly.

Sure, the fans still harbor intense dislike for each other. A Bears fan wouldn’t dare enter Wisconsin with their team’s jersey on. That wouldn’t be anything less than a judgment day for them. But recent circumstances have changed the discourse. The Bears’ 2024 season unraveled with a brutal 10-game skid and a 5-12 record. The offensive line broke down. Coaching shuffled midseason. Fans who once lived for the drama started looking away. Even Ben Johnson’s team felt the shift, opting for a rebuild over revenge.

That rebuild is now in motion. The Bears re-upped veteran Joe Thuney, with GM Ryan Poles calling him “a member of the Chicago Bears for the years ahead.” Rookies arrived with fresh legs and big expectations. The front office made moves, the locker room changed, but the sting of irrelevance still lingered. The Bears were trying to climb, but the rivalry spotlight has moved ahead.

Television personality Kay Adams pressed Green Bay’s Coach Matt LaFleur on Up & Adams about Chicago’s new roster. He gave the group its due, saying, “See, I probably have a different perspective than you growing up in the state of Michigan, where you know, I grew up in the Barry Sanders era, our era, so that was always entertaining TV to turn on the TV on Sundays. But I think they are all rivals and certainly when Detroit is—I mean, right now—they’re the class of the NFC.”

That wasn’t shade. It was respect. The video is titled, “Detroit is the class of the NFC. Packers HC Matt LaFleur on whether the Packers-Lions rivalry has overtaken Packers-Bears in the NFC North.” The praise is not just empty words. Dan Campbell’s squad has just reloaded. After that gritty 2024 campaign, the Lions upgraded their locker room with a fresh crop of warriors: Roy Lopez, Grant Stuard, Kyle Allen, and Kenny Yeboah.

There are not just depth pieces but also culture pieces. The kind of guys who can swing momentum in December and make noise in January. Detroit’s rise is turning a lot of heads in the North. It’s padded with wins of past veterans, sealed with confidence of new blood, and fueled by a division edge they refuse to give up. Coach Matt LaFleur has taken notice and is gearing up.

Fans call the Packers vs Lions rivalry the Yooper Bowl now, but for Matt LaFleur, it stung a lot deeper than a nickname. After the Packers’ 2023 loss to the Lions, the coach was quite disturbed. This wasn’t the usual division game. This was a bad loss, and LaFleur knew it. The Lions weren’t just in the mix—they were the clear threat in the NFC North. And in 2024, they doubled down on that claim.

Matt LaFleur’s blood ran cold after “throat-slashing” gestures last year!

The matchup between the Packers and Lions has reached new levels—raw, heated, and personal. The stands aren’t just loud—they’re volatile. Tensions spilled over in ways even LaFleur didn’t expect. After a December matchup, he revealed, “I have never been a part of something like that.” Fans made throat-slashing gestures toward Packers players. It wasn’t just banter. It crossed the line. “I thought it was pretty unsportsmanlike,” the coach added. The rivalry was no longer just physical—it became emotional.

Matt LaFleur didn’t sugarcoat it. After another bruising clash against the Lions, he stood in front of his team and laid it out. “I told our team, we are going to have to earn the right to come back,” he said. There were no guarantees, no shortcuts, just the hard truth of a division slipping away. “It’s not going to be easy. But I am confident in the resiliency of our group.” LaFleur wasn’t making excuses—he was laying down a challenge.

The tone turned reflective as he addressed what went wrong. “Ultimately, I felt we just started, especially on the offensive side of the ball, too slow. We go punt, punt, fumble, then we score,” he said. It wasn’t just the scoreline—it was the tempo. The Packers couldn’t find rhythm early and dug themselves into a hole before they could adjust. Momentum doesn’t wait around in the NFL, and against a team like Detroit, hesitation gets punished.

But there was a spark in that second half—a glimmer of what this team still could be. “I thought our guys did a good job coming out in the second half, kinda getting the momentum by going down, getting a touchdown, hitting the big play to Christian (Watson), then defensively getting the takeaway and converting that into points,” LaFleur said. It wasn’t enough, not this time. But the fight was there. The comeback started late, but it started. And in LaFleur’s eyes, that matters—because resilience isn’t measured in quarters. It’s built through moments like these.

Coach is keeping his eye open this 2025 season, and fans have already had their eyes peeled for a long time. Only games will speak now.