The Green Bay Packers and head coach Matt LaFleur have been waiting nine months to hand Ben Johnson and the Chicago Bears a bit of payback for the comeback playoff loss in January and absolutely unloaded on their division rivals at Lambeau Field on Sunday.
Following the contest in Week 5, LaFleur walked to midfield for the mandatory handshake with Johnson. The pending interaction caught the attention of the cameras given the short, but already storied and volatile history between Johnson’s Bears and LaFleur’s Packers.
And while LaFleur could have been petty, or Johnson could have been fiery, their embrace stretched beyond civil to mildly familiar, and almost friendly (at least on LaFleur’s part) — albeit relatively brief.
“The handshake,” Ryan Wood of USA Today captioned an X video. “Not quite a blow by.”
“Matt LaFleur had to love this,” former ESPN NFL personality Trey Wingo captioned a different angle of the handshake.
In fact, LaFleur patted Johnson on the back after the joining of hands at midfield — as one coach headed to a reinvigorated Packers locker room after the team’s second straight win, while another headed to the visitors’ locker room with serious questions to answer about the quarterback position moving forward.
“Again, I have a hard time with that. That’s a better question for them,” LaFleur said when asked about his players’ response to Johnson’s highly publicized trash talk during the postgame in January. “Here’s what I’ll tell you. I think we all are moving in the same direction. And we all got each other’s backs.”
Packers Beat Bears Into QB Controversy Following Week 5
Green Bay forced four turnovers on the day and got quarterback Tyson Bagent benched in the fourth quarter.
In fact, LaFleur and company shut down what was the No. 1 offense in the NFL through four weeks so thoroughly that Johnson will face a QB controversy ahead of his team’s game against the Atlanta Falcons next Sunday, assuming that Caleb Williams remains too injured to return.
The Packers peppered Case Keenum upon his entrance into the contest, picking him off in the end zone. Green Bay is now tied with Chicago at 3-2 and holds the tiebreak. Both teams trail the undefeated Minnesota Vikings (5-0) in the standings.
Meanwhile, the Detroit Lions are 2-2 and playing the Arizona Cardinals during the afternoon slate of Week 5 games.
Packers’ Pass Game Came Alive in Win Over Bears
The Packers, on the other hand, looked better than they have all season while undressing the Bears’ defense.
Green Bay scored 31 points on the afternoon and finally got the run game going, sort of, as MarShawn Lloyd found the end zone twice. However, the league’s worst rushing attack at 58 yards per game through Week 4 managed just 70 yards on the ground as a team.
Quarterback Jordan Love and the pass game, however, wrote a completely different story. Love went 25-of-31 for 367 yards and two scores. Christian Watson led the way in the wide receiver room, hauling in six catches for 143 yards and two scores.
Packers’ Matt LaFleur Bests Bears, Wins Head Coach Handshake With Ben Johnson