The story on Aaron Rodgers and the Bears, an all-time epic in football’s library, was written and finished late in 2022 when he walked out of Soldier Field as a Packer for the last time. Anything after that would be merely an epilogue, especially in a Steelers uniform.
Everyone would still want to read it, nonetheless, and Rodgers making one last stand on the lakefront Sunday, even in his diminished state, would be compelling drama. The drama before the drama is whether he’ll be able to play, and that decision could drag out until shortly before kickoff.
Every indication from the Steelers and Rodgers leading up to the game has been that he will try to play through a small fracture in his non-throwing wrist, though he did not complete a full practice during the week and was listed as questionable on the final injury report Friday.
Rodgers and coach Mike Tomlin said the decision would come down to Rodgers finding a suitable brace that would protect him yet still allow him to do the basics of his job such as handling a snap and securing the ball when he runs, and Rodgers practiced with a brace Thursday and Friday. If he can’t play, the Steelers will go with backup Mason Rudolph.
That would be a colossal disappointment.
Nothing against Rudolph, but this final fight between Rodgers and the Bears has been months in the making. Rodgers, who said in June he’s “pretty sure” this will be his final season, mentioned the allure of the Steelers having a game at Soldier Field this season before he signed with them.
And why wouldn’t he?
Rodgers noted this week he’s had “a lot of fun memories over the years” at Soldier Field, and there are too many to mention them all.
He won the 2010 NFC Championship Game there on his way to his only championship. He launched a touchdown pass from midfield to steal a 2013 game and win the division. He delivered a near-perfect four-touchdown, 300-yard game in 2014 for a stunning 151.2 passer rating.
And then there was the unforgettable 2021 game when Rodgers scrambled for a touchdown to put the Packers decisively ahead in the fourth quarter and screamed at fans in the southwest corner of the stadium, “All my [expletive] life, I own you. I still own you. I still own you.”
In 30 career games against them, including the NFC title game, he went 25-5. More than 10% of his career touchdown passes have come against the Bears. He has an outstanding 101.7 passer rating against the rest of the league, but bumped it to 107.3 against the Bears.
Think of all they threw at him over almost two decades. None of it mattered.
He faced defensive legends Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman and Khalil Mack. The team tried to counter him with a big trade for Jay Cutler and first-round picks of Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields. Each new coach and general manager who walked into Halas Hall took aim at Rodgers and the Packers and couldn’t stop them.
Throughout, he literally rewrote the record book.
Rodgers likes to bring this up all the time and did so again leading up to this game: The Bears led the all-time series 90-79-6 going into his first season as a starter, and the Packers were up 105-95-6 when he left.
He continued the Packers’ seemingly impossible streak of quarterbacks. Brett Favre went 22-10 against the Bears from 1992 through 2007, Rodgers had his run and relative newcomer Jordan Love is off to a 3-1 start.
The Bears hope they’ve found their answer to that in Caleb Williams. In a cruel twist, his favorite quarterback growing up was, of course, Rodgers.
Williams and coach Ben Johnson don’t have to tame the same beast that conquered their predecessors. As Rodgers nears 42, he’s not the quarterback he was in his prime.
He tumbled, as most quarterbacks not named Tom Brady have, in his late 30s. After winning back-to-back MVPs in 2021 and ’22, giving him four for his career, he’s had a pedestrian 92.5 passer rating with the Jets and Steelers and gone 20-25 as a starter. His first season with the Jets, 2023, was wiped out by a torn Achilles.
This season, though, he and the Steelers have been a good fit. They needed a quarterback for a win-now team and weren’t picking high enough to get one in the draft. He needed a team that was good enough to make a run.
His 97.7 passer rating is his best since 2021 and ranks 12th in the NFL, and he’s in the top half of qualifying quarterbacks in completion percentage (66.4) and touchdown passes (19). He is, however, throwing interceptions at one of the highest rates of his career (10) and averaging a career-low 196.9 yards per game.
If he plays, he’s got enough left for the Bears to be concerned and enough left to turn Soldier Field into a grand stage one last time.