Skip to content
Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers advised Packers fans to relax last season after the team started the year 1-2. This year it's Bears fans who should follow his lead, but for a different reason.
Associated Press
Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers advised Packers fans to relax last season after the team started the year 1-2. This year it’s Bears fans who should follow his lead, but for a different reason.
Author
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

Relax.

This is the word that came to define the Green Bay Packers’ memorable turnaround last season.

Following a lackluster showing in a Week 3 loss, Green Bay sat at 1-2 and a wave of panic overtook fans of the Green and Gold. To calm the anxiety of a flustered fan base, quarterback Aaron Rodgers famously offered a simple suggestion.

“Five letters here just for everybody out there in Packer-land: R-E-L-A-X,” Rodgers said on his weekly ESPN Milwaukee radio show. “Relax. We’re going to be OK.”

As you may recall, the Pack then caught fire. Rodgers won the league MVP award, and the Packers clinched the NFC North title with a 12-4 regular-season mark before coming a few very unlucky bounces away from a Super Bowl berth.

This year, it’s Bears fans who would be wise to heed that advice.

Uh, no. No such run is in store for this year’s Bears. So by relax I mean give up entirely on pro football in this city because this team absolutely sucks. It may have caught fire, but only in the sense that they are a blazing dumpster inferno with no hope of being extinguished anytime soon.

The vocal umbrage of incensed radio callers and angry arm-flailing of season-ticket holders are never of much use, but somehow they’re even less so this season.

You don’t even have to feel guilty about giving up on your team—the executives beat you to it. Even as the season was circling the drain, they decided to keep flushing, beginning their fire sale by basically giving away Jared Allen and Jon Bostic.

The front office is content to draw the blinds in the team suite and enjoy the RedZone channel with a mountain of chicken fingers and shrimp. I don’t blame them. On the watchability scale, this team lies somewhere between “2 Broke Girls” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” I advise you to indulge in whatever other options you can find until commissioner Roger Goodell steps up to the podium in April to announce the Bears’ first overall selection in the 2016 NFL Draft.

Hey, the Cubs are going to the postseason, you can watch that for the time being. Actually, it could even serve as a source of hope for your football fandom. If the Bears commit to face-planting consistently for the better part of the next decade, they too might have a chance at the second wild-card slot in about seven years’ time.

I’m kidding. Relax.

Tim Coffey is a RedEye special contributor. @tqcoff

Is this the year you learn a new skill? You can with RedEye’s help. Start here.