The Chicago Bears are expected to win against the Green Bay Packers for the first time in a long time
The Chicago Bears will host the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. When they do, they will be favored to beat their division rival by six points. This is rare air for a team that has not been favored against the Packers since 2008. Of course, the first thing people will point to is the Packers quarterback situation. Brett Hundley is not Aaron Rodgers, and an Aaron Rodgers team should almost never be an underdog, regardless of his opponent.
However, this can also speak to the Bears. While they have not been favored against Packers in a long time, they have not been favored to win a game at all in a while either. In fact, heading into Week 10 they have been underdogs in all eight games so far this season. The last time that they were favored to win a game would have to go back a full year to Week 10 of 2016, when they lost as 2.5 point favorites against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They were favored three times in 2016, and lost all three games.
On top of that, they were only favored to win twice in 2015. They lost both of those games as well. To find the last time that the Bears were expected to win a football game, and actually came through and won was November 23, 2014. The were favored to beat the Buccaneers by 4.5 points and not only won, but covered the spread, winning by eight points.
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This Bears team will mentally be in a spot that they have yet to be in. They have been out to prove doubters wrong, and have pulled off three wins this way. Now, they are expected to be the better team here. It will be interesting to see how this team reacts to being in a new spot.