Morning Buzz: Taking care of business
Welcome to your game day Morning Buzz, rounding up news and views regarding the Green Bay Packers from around the web and here at PackersNews.com. Grab a cup of coffee (or brew some tea, if that’s your thing) and get caught up on everything you need to know about the Packers before they take on the Chicago Bears later this afternoon.
As always on game day, the best place to start is Bob McGinn’s game preview.
Horrendous weather and the Packers’ respectable defense should limit the Bears’ scoring. The Bears’ most likely path to victory would be if their three dangerous edge pass rushers started sacking/harassing Aaron Rodgers. If David Bakhtiari and Bryan Bulaga shut that down, Green Bay should win handily.
Pete Dougherty has an excellent column up that looks at some of the big adjustments Mike McCarthy has made in past seasons that have ended up turning around the Packers’ fortunes. Did McCarthy wait too long to adjust in 2016?
This season’s home stretch will show whether he’s done it again this year with his bid to revive a stagnant offense that had been wiped out at running back to boot.
This time, though, I’d argue he was more reluctant, and thus slower, to commit to the big change than in the past. Late enough that the Packers’ season was in jeopardy after a four-game losing streak. But now that he has embraced a more wide-open offensive approach, plus gotten healthier in the secondary, his team’s prospects heading into the final three games are reborn.
All week we’ve heard how cold it’s going to be during today’s game. Tom Silverstein lays out how the cold and the wind will affect things for both teams.
The Packers offense has benefited from the renewed connection in the red zone between Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson. Michael Cohen takes a look.
In what is seen as a precautionary measure, the Packers have signed Joe Callahan to the 53 man roster for today’s game.
Expect Ty Montgomery to be the Packers starting running back today:
It’s been a long time since the series with the Bears has been tied:
Richard Sherman was indeed fined for his cheap shot on Davante Adams last week:
Matt Bowen wrote about the various ways NFL players stay warm in brutally cold games:
The Soldier Field grounds crew was up and at it early this morning:
The staff at the Chicago Tribune is pretty one-sided in their predictions for today’s game:
Josh Sitton joined A.J. Hawk on his podcast earlier this week:
The Packers and Bears face off on the date the Bears won the NFL’s initial championship:
The MMQB chronicled how much Packers fans dislike Bears fans while they were in town last week:
Our predictions for Packers-Bears can be seen below: