Thursday Preview: Bears at Packers

“Hopefully, he can bounce back quickly for Thursday”, McCarthy said. It’s easy to win when no one’s watching, but the playoff teams, the division champions, and the contenders win no matter how big the stage. In their continued quest for a marquee win, they also lost last month at Denver, but at least that one was close at 23-20.

“It was good to get him going consistently”.

Sunday’s game was televised to most of the nation on Fox.

“We can’t win playing the way we did”, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said. Against a quality opponent like the Packers they weren’t able to overcome them. There were times when Bridgewater held the ball too long.

“We needed to be more focused this week and have more urgency and we did that today”. In the three losses, he has averaged just over 52 yards a game on the ground on four yards a carry, while in the seven wins; he has averaged about 121 yards a game at five yards a carry. When he did have a chance to redeem himself, he fumbled. Yes, I had the Vikings winning this game and keeping the No. 1 spot in the NFC North. The Vikings were hot coming into this game.

“You know Bart’s been such a great encouragement to me since I was drafted here, and I really have appreciated all of our conversations over the years with him and his lovely wife”, Rodgers said, via Wes Hodkiewicz of the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Plenty, though, hurt the Vikings.

“There were too many times that we shot ourselves in the foot mistakes in crucial situations”, he said. Your skills aren’t as sharp when you are playing the Chiefs, Lions, Bears and Rams and you might not be ready for a Rodgers-led Packers team.

Green Bay (7-3) had lost its previous three and Minnesota (7-3) had won five in a row.

This week’s game against the Falcons is important, just as important as a division game.

The holiday matchup is the 191st regular-season meeting between the Bears and Packers – the most played series in National Football League history – and marks the first Thanksgiving day game in Green Bay in 92 years. We did a lot of uncharacteristic things trying to get up for this game when you just have to treat it like a normal game and let the game come to you. Lacy was able to return this week and he had his best game of the season, with highs of 22 carries and 100 yards.

IN THE HOODIE: Packers receiver James Jones had 109 yards and a score on six catches against Minnesota.

In that game he had two catches for 26 yards but did draw a critical pass interference call that allowed the Bears to get their first touchdown of the game in the final minute.

Minnesota’s other touchdown came late in the first quarter on a 47-yard pass down the left sideline from Bridgewater to tight end Kyle Rudolph for a 6-3 lead.

And on special teams: Blair Walsh missed an extra point and Cordarrelle Patterson was flagged for unnecessary roughness when he head-butted kicker Mason Crosby after a big kick return. Cutler managed to throw an interception as well as complete 18 of the 32 passes for 265 yards in the match that ended in a 17-15 loss.

“We’d run around in the purple, as my wife was running around in the green”, said John. He gets out of the pocket, we get a pass interference and then we get a couple of penalties down in the red zone. “We have to make sure that we aren’t going to do any of that”.