How The Bears Got The Green Bay Packers And Their Fans To Turn On Each Other

For over 30 years, the Green Bay Packers have maintained an aura of excellence that few franchises have ever come close to replicating. Between 1992 and 2025, they had five losing seasons. That’s it. Otherwise, they either had a winning record or were in the playoffs competing for championships. It felt like there was a harmonious relationship between the team and fans. An unshakable bond. As it turns out, that bond might’ve been hollow all along. The Packers merely kept it secret because they’ve been winning for so long.

Now, as the team gets a real taste of being genuinely bad for the first time in ages, the fans have turned on them. Thursday night felt like a bottoming out. Despite being at home against the winless Atlanta Falcons, who’d just gotten crushed a few days prior by Carolina, the Packers came out flat. Bijan Robinson and Drake London torched them for more than 400 combined yards, and the Falcons cruised to a 35-14 victory. It was the most humiliating defeat in years, and the fans made their displeasure known by booing the team. Tight end Tucker Kraft seemed to take exception to that.

“That’s pretty tough. Like everyone pictures Lambeau Field and not boos. I don’t picture boos. I picture my home stadium. That’s tough. It’s pretty disappointing, especially for a home opener. It’s pretty disappointing. It’s not going to help us win. Like I don’t know what people think that’s going to rally us or something like that. But that’s — we’re grown men. We’re mentally strong enough, capable enough to get back on the field and play ball. But it’d probably much easier with the 70,000 people behind us rather than opposing us.”

It all traces back to that December Green Bay Packers loss in Chicago.

Going into that fateful game at Soldier Field, the Packers were 9-4-1. Despite losing to Denver the previous week, they were still in control of the division. They’d already beaten the Chicago Bears a few weeks earlier at Lambeau Field. All they had to do was take care of business that night, and everything would remain as it should. Everything was fine going into the 4th quarter. Green Bay led 16-6 with 5:06 left. History said that there was no way the Bears were coming back. They never had before.

Then the craziness started. Overcoming two penalties and a 4th down to kick a field goal to pull within 7. Securing an onside kick to steal a possession. Hitting an undrafted rookie receiver on 4th down for the tying score with 24 seconds left. Caleb Williams to D.J. Moore in overtime. Game over. From that point, the Green Bay Packers would lose another four games in a row, including another one to the Bears in the playoffs. All of that self-assurance and confidence evaporated.

Watching them against Atlanta, some theorized that something had broken in the Packers’ heads because of that loss to Chicago.

Players firing back at fans is the first sign of bad tidings.

The Bears can speak from experience. After all, this exact scenario happened to them seven years ago. In the 2019 opener, Chicago lost to Green Bay 10-3 in one of the most frustrating games in the rivalry’s history. Bears fans showered the offense with boos towards the end, disgusted by the utter lack of productivity against a team they’d literally beaten just a few months prior. Safety Eddie Jackson was disturbed by the events and made that known during a radio interview.

“For them to start booing, that’s something that we don’t take kindly, we don’t accept, we don’t like.”

Sound familiar? That is essentially the same thing Kraft said. You can’t boo us. That doesn’t help anybody. We all know what happened after that. Chicago finished 8-8, missed the playoffs after that promising 2018 run, and fell into mediocrity. Is the same thing happening to Green Bay? All the signs are there. Players are disgruntled. Coaches seem to have lost the locker room. The roster is flawed. Fans are furious. To think it all got rolling because of a loss to the Bears.