Bears safety Jaquan Brisker is on a text thread with a few of his former Penn State teammates, including star edge rusher Micah Parsons. During training camp, after Parsons requested a trade from the Cowboys, the Bears safety playfully lobbied via text for his buddy to come to Chicago.
One day in August, Parsons texted the group and asked offensive lineman Rasheed Walker to get ahold of him.
Walker plays for the Packers.
“Ahhhh,” Brisker groaned Thursday. “It was like, ‘Yeah, he’s going to go to the Packers.’”
He did a few days later, in a trade that sent the Cowboys defensive tackle Kenny Clark and first-round draft picks the next two years. Parsons immediately signed a four-year, $188 million deal with the Packers that included $136 million in guaranteed money, the most-ever for an NFL player who doesn’t play quarterback.
The trade transformed the NFC North, a division that the 9-3 Bears lead entering Sunday’s matchup against the 8-3-1 Packers at Lambeau Field. The Packers have done little to diminish their position as a Super Bowl contender, winning their last three games. Vegas odds have them at 9-1 odds to win the Super Bowl. The Bears, by contrast, are 25-1.
The Bears will be the last NFC North team to get their first look at Parsons — they play the rival Packers twice in the next three weeks. He’ll provide the ultimate test for quarterback Caleb Williams, who’s proven to be as elusive as any quarterback in the NFL. Williams averages 3.18 seconds to throw on each down, the most in the NFL, and has shown a preternatural sense for when to spin out of trouble and away from hungry pass-rushers.
“There’s a number of guys that you play in the league that you have to be aware of on every snap,” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. “He’s one of those guys. Very talented player. He’s slippery. He’s a great pass rusher.”
When Williams walks to the line of scrimmage Sunday, he’ll check to his left — Parsons has rushed from that side 330 times this season. Then he’ll look to the right edge, where Parsons has rushed 229 times. If he’s not there, Parsons could be lurking at defensive tackle, where he’s played 13 snaps this year, or inside linebacker, where he’s played 34.
“They do a great job moving him around,” coach Ben Johnson said. “It’s hard to get a bead on where he’s going to be.”
Or what he’s going to do. Bears defensive end Austin Booker, who has admired Parsons afar, said Parsons “earned the freedom to do what he feels is right.”
The Bears have played someone like that before — the Raiders’ Maxx Crosby, who absolutely terrorized them in the first half of their Week 4 matchup. Crosby had an interception, forced fumble, three tackles for loss and three pass breakups in a one-point Bears win.
“They’re similar in their ability to be disruptive and change the game,” offensive line coach Dan Roushar said. “Maxx may be a little longer, a little [more] linear, but presented the same problem. We have our hands full.”
Rookie Ozzy Trapilo’s first-ever NFL snaps came in Las Vegas, when he came off the bench to play right tackle. Sunday, he’ll be making his third start at left tackle.
The second-round draft pick said Parsons, like Crosby, can be unpredictable.
“He’s so twitchy and so fast that he can get away with beating a guy on the inside and still containing [the run],” he said. “Things like that, not everybody can do. He’s just got so much speed and athletic ability that he does things like that and broadens his game.”
The Bears proclaim confidence in Trapilo, who kept the starting job even after Theo Benedet returned from injury. They want Trapilo to use his hands more effectively — to strike the defender before they get hit.
“He’s still a young player that’s learning, every snap, the intensity, the physicality, the need to finish,” Roushar said. “Those things are all things that we’re trying to get him to do better.”
Trapilo has been studying Parsons’ stances before the snap to see if he can find tendencies about which pass rush moves he’ll use. But film doesn’t do justice to Parsons, who is third in the NFL with 12 ½ sacks. The Packers defense is allowing, on average, the fourth-fewest yards and the sixth-fewest points.
“He’s extremely sudden, so he can be disruptive in the run game as well as the pass game in the blink of an eye,” Roushar said. “It’s really difficult to simulate a guy that can accelerate, change direction and become a factor. So you can watch it on film, but to actually create that is another animal.”
One the Bears will get to see up close for the first time since 2023, when he returned a fumble 36 yards for a touchdown as a Cowboy.
“He’s known as one of those guys that is a beast out on the edge, and he’s definitely earned that title,” Trapilo said. “We’re going to do everything we can to block him the best we can.”