Can Packers be a dynasty? 1985 Bears couldn’t

The 2010 Packers look like a budding dynasty, just like the 1985 Bears did.

The Packers won Super Bowl XLV with a youthful roster, just as the Bears won Super Bowl XX with a youthful roster.

The fear throughout the NFC North now is that the Packers are poised to improve from here.

Packers head coach Mike McCarthy said Monday, “We expect to continue to grow and get better.”

Already, rjbell@pregame.com, lists Green Bay at 11 to 1 to win Super Bowl XLVI, second to New England’s 10 to 1.

(By the way, the Bears are No. 13 at 38 to 1.)

But the ’85 Bears can caution the ’10 Packers to take nothing for granted.

“We’ll be a different team,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said of inevitable changes. “But I think the core and nucleus of this team is intact to make a run like this for a few years.”

That sounds similar to what was said about the Bears after they won Super Bowl XX.

Not only did the ’85 Bears dominate, the ’86 Bears regained safety Todd Bell and defensive end Al Harris after they sat out the championship season as contract holdouts.

Likewise these Packers can “reload,” as Rodgers put it, with the 15 players who went on injured reserve this season.

“As a kid I wanted to win a Super Bowl,” Rodgers said. “We’ve got one, so now what? Let’s go get another one.”

Sounds like a plan, but that illustrious Bears core 25 years ago not only didn’t win another Super Bowl, it didn’t reach another one.

To this point these Packers appear to be significantly different from those Bears.

Rodgers looks more dedicated than Jim McMahon, the Bears quarterback who came out for the first practice of training camp in 1986 looking like a stuffed QB doll.

McCarthy looks more stable than Mike Ditka, whose many personalities became the wacky faces of the franchise.

These Packers generally look more grounded than those Bears, who provided the NFL with a new definition of wild and crazy.

Overall these Packers appear to be as boring as Green Bay, but those Bears were as exciting as Rush Street.

Boring is better in the NFL.

The ’85 Bears had so much talent — four future Hall of Famers and a deep supporting cast — that they went a combined 37-10 over the next three regular seasons.

But those Bears were destined to disappoint because of self-imposed, self-interested, self-destructive distractions. The only time they won a playoff game, the 49ers embarrassed them 28-3 in Soldier Field the next week.

Injuries were a factor for the decline. So was losing defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan. So was an ill-advised reorganization of the front office.

Most of all, however, the Bears imploded in a pile of “me” over “team.”

“Handling success is the hardest part of this business,” McCarthy said. “It’s something we’re going to have to manage as a football team.”

If the Packers want to know how to mismanage success, they should review the history of the underachieving post-1985 Bears.

McCarthy and Rodgers both described the opportunity to repeat as a “challenge.”

The 2010 Packers will meet the challenge only if they go from similar to dissimilar in comparison to the 1985 Bears.

The current Bears, and the entire NFC North for that matter, have to hope that history repeats itself and the Packers don’t.

mimrem@dailyherald.com