Greenberg: All sunny with the Bears, but Green Bay awaits

Posted December 02, 2025 4:00 pm

By Jon Greenberg

It’s snowing again. The sky is gray. Winter has come to Chicago and plans to stay until baseball season.

And yet, if you’re looking through your orange-and-blue colored glasses, the world couldn’t be brighter because the Bears are 9-3 and currently the top-seeded team in the NFC (and in first place in the NFC North). There are free hot dogs coming because Ben Johnson ripped off his shirt celebrating a win over the defending Super Bowl champions.

Got all that?

Everything is brilliant and sunny when the Bears are good, which only happens every seven or eight years, so you might as well appreciate it. Forget about light therapy for your seasonal depression, just plug in the 2025 Bears.

Let’s go back to the hot dogs. On Tuesday, the Wiener’s Circle will give out freebies because a pretty ripped Ben Johnson ripped off his shirt to celebrate the Friday night win in Philadelphia. The popular hot dog establishment already gave out free hot dogs when Caleb Williams threw for four touchdowns earlier in the season, and then goaded Johnson on social media into ripping his shirt off to do it again. Weeks later, he gave in.

“I think anytime you get a chance to feed a city, you want to do it,” Johnson said Monday. “So, man of the people.”

As for the spectacle itself …

“It was bizarre,” tight end Cole Kmet said with a laugh Monday. “But it was cool. He was pumped up and jacked about it.”

Watching your coach go nuts after a win sure beats the alternative. A year ago, we were getting to know interim coach Thomas Brown before his first game, a 38-13 loss in San Francisco, in which the Bears were outgained 452-162. That was the 2024 Bears’ seventh loss in a row, with three more on their way.

With nine wins, the 2025 Bears have eclipsed the over/under for season victories with five games left, but now this team is playing for something else. Not just a playoff berth, but playoff positioning.

With that in mind, here come the Green Bay Packers. The Bears face their rivals twice in the next three weeks, starting Sunday at Lambeau Field.

The Bears are actually on a bit of a heater in Green Bay, having won one game in a row there. Brown got his only win as Bears coach in the season finale in January. It was a meaningless victory that only served to get the Bears a slightly worse draft pick, but I remember feeling happy for the players who had suffered through an ignominious season and deserved, just for their sacrifice of body and time, a win to end on.

Playing the Packers has been a losing proposition since Aaron Rodgers took over for Brett Favre. Last season’s finale was the Bears’ first win against them since 2018, and they did it as 10-point underdogs.

This time, the Bears are actually 6.5-point ’dogs, according to BetMGM, which, surprisingly enough, is one of the biggest spreads in the last five years, according to Covers.com.

I don’t know if Johnson uses the point spread in his weekly messaging, but in this case, I would do it. Every coach wants to be an underdog when they think they can win.

And you know Johnson thinks his Bears can win this game. So do the players.

At his introductory news conference, Johnson raised eyebrows when he pointed out that he enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a season. I figured, at first, they were buddies. But that’s not the case. It was a planned zinger. Needless to say, Johnson’s players enjoyed the line.

“Obviously, it gets you pumped up,” Kmet said. “That’s the big rivalry here, not only in the NFC North but I think league-wide. If you look across sports in general, this is a huge rivalry and a game that means a lot to a lot of people. I think Ben understood that, coming in and taking the job. This is a game I look forward to every year. This is one of my favorites. Especially going up there, I obviously have respect for the opponent, but it’s an honor to be part of this type of game. Looking forward to the two times we get to face them now down the stretch here. Both look like they’re going to be very meaningful games for both teams going forward.”

The Bears face Green Bay again in two weeks at home. I penciled this game as a loss, but after beating Philly in Philly, I’m not sure there are any games left on the schedule that this team can’t win. They won’t run the table — I don’t think so, anyway — but we’re at the point where the Bears aren’t plucky underdogs anymore.

That presents a new challenge, though not an unwelcome one. Johnson, the guy who was just shirtless in the locker room, now has to tame down the hype.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said of being in first place. “There are five games left, so we’ve got a long ways to go and we have not been guaranteed a spot in the tournament yet. We have to earn that. And the only way you can earn that right is by finding a way to win the next game. So that’s where our sole focus is.”

It’s not like the Bears don’t have things to fix. Caleb Williams’ accuracy issues haven’t been front-page news because the Bears have been winning. But it’s a concern going into this week and the rest of the season. Williams has only finished with a 60% completion rate in four games all season, the last on Oct. 26. Then again, the Bears lost that game in Baltimore and have won all five since. Last Friday, he was under 50% and it was Chicago’s biggest win of the season.

“It’s an area that we are certainly talking about,” Johnson said. “There’s no question, I will say in regards to Friday, that that was one of the more challenging games in terms of the wind.”

I don’t know how windy it will be on Sunday in Green Bay. But it will be a late-afternoon game in likely freezing conditions. Not ideal for throwing the pigskin, but it will be perfect football weather. Put on your orange-and-blue glasses and visualize a Bears victory on the Frozen Tundra. Because this season, you can’t stop the sun from shining on the Chicago Bears.