Green Bay’s linebackers fueled the Packers’ collapse against the Bears

For all the talk about how cornerbacks were going to be the liability of this Green Bay Packers team going into the playoffs, it was really the Packers’ linebackers who cost the team the most through the air in their loss to the Chicago Bears. Yes, the cornerbacks gave up a couple of big plays, but some of those plays were also just flat-out incredible throws by Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, who was able to beat a couple of Green Bay’s pressures.

Here, I want to show you the mistakes (a lot of them mental) that the linebackers made on Saturday, which ultimately fueled the fire of the Packers’ fourth-quarter collapse.

Let’s start this with a brutal third-and-long conversion on the first drive of the game. The guy you’re going to want to watch here is linebacker Edgerrin Cooper (#56), at the top of the screen in the slot. It’s an empty formation, so fellow linebacker Quay Walker (#7) is inside leverage of the third man (outside in) at the bottom of the screen. The Packers are playing quarters, so Cooper has the flat responsibility up top.

Cooper collisions to reroute the slot (good), and since the slot is going vertical, he passes him off to the safety (also good). From there, Cooper should realize he has all of the outside receiver underneath, since there’s no other threat to his side of the field. That is what cornerback Keisean Nixon (#25) communicates when he points at the receiver running an in-cutting route (Nixon is passing him off to Cooper and presumably is communicating this verbally, too).

Williams holds his eyes, though, looking (his) right of Cooper to a man who does not exist in the area. By the time Cooper figures out that Williams is looking at a phantom receiver, Cooper’s coverage assignment has already crossed his face for a wide-open first-down conversion after it finally looked like the Packers had the Bears’ offense on the ropes.

The next play I want to look at is a basic Cover 3 call on defense, with the cornerbacks playing sideline zones, safety Evan Williams (#33) playing the middle of the field, the linebackers playing hook zones and slot defender Javon Bullard (#20) and drop-down safety Xavier McKinney (#29) playing the flats.

Walker doesn’t get enough depth in the hook, leading to a wide-open in-breaking route. Big play. First down. At a minimum, Walker could have made this window smaller. It’s a good call into Cover 3, but it’s not that good.

This is quarter-quarter-half, with the bottom of the screen playing quarters/Cover 4 and the top of the screen playing Cover 2, even though it looks like Cover 3 (with a safety in the middle of the field) pre-snap. This is a disguise look, a changing of the picture of the coverage post-snap after walking up linebacker Isaiah McDuffie (#58) over the center to draw attention away from the coverage.

The Packers only send four, so McDuffie drops into the hook, as does Walker. The checkdown is taken, and that’s really not anyone’s fault in coverage. The problem with this play is that McDuffie ends up taking himself and Walker both out of the play on a checkdown that ended up turning into a big yards-after-catch opportunity for the Bears.

The next play is a split-safety look in the red zone. With trips to the top of the screen, Walker pretty much has all of anyone who becomes the new #3 (think of it as the first person who tries to cross his face) on this play. On paper, McDuffie (bottom of the screen) probably should have stayed square in his hook, which would have made the window tighter on the play and potentially allowed him to make a tackle short of the goal line, but Walker’s lack of giddyup is really why the Bears scored here.

This is the first play where I’m not 100 percent sure of the assignment, because there are different ways to do it, but I would guess that this on Walker. This is a crossing route against single-high coverage, a good call…but again not that good of a call. I’d put money that this is a coverage bust on Walker, who just never took the most inside slot receiver up the field for some reason.

This is your standard Tampa 2 coverage, where the safeties play the deep halves, the outside linebackers (or slot in this case) play the hooks and the cornerbacks play the flats. This leaves the middle linebacker to almost play a middle-of-the-field type of safety role, as he’s supposed to bail deep at the snap of the ball.

Walker, the middle linebacker on this play, starts to get depth but ends up taking the bait on the in-breaker from the top of the screen, not realizing there’s a post coming from the bottom of the screen. The whole point of Tampa 2 is to have the middle linebacker help squeeze the window on the post route, but it’s wide open on this play. McKinney probably could have taken a better angle, but this is another blown coverage on Walker.

Now we’ll get to a part of the program I’ll call “everyone involved with this play gets blamed.”

Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley cooked up a blitz look, which showed seven potential blitzers at the line of scrimmage, but only four actually came. That, in itself, is not the problem. The problem was that Chicago came out in a four-open look, with no tight end attached to the formation, which means that pre-snap, the Packers only had two defenders over the three-man bunch at the bottom of the screen.

In real time, I swear to God, I said to myself, “I hope they don’t throw a screen.” It was a screen. Technically, there’s supposed to be an extra defender to help out there post-snap. In reality, though, that player is defensive end Lukas Van Ness (#90), in a three-point stance on the hash. Van Ness ended up making the tackle outside of the numbers, but not until after Chicago recorded an explosive play. This is pretty much the worst look you could have drawn up for this defensive call, and someone, somewhere, should have been able to recognize it and check out it. Burn the timeout. Anything.

Fun fact: This was the only play that cornerback Trevon Diggs (#28) played against the Bears. That’s also Nixon playing in the slot, which is the only time he’s played the slot all season. I hate this game so much.

In the second leg of “everyone gets blamed here,” we have a play action that everyone but the middle of the field safety and cornerbacks bit on. Both crossers were wide open. All four underneath zone defenders took the bait. Had Williams not thrown it to either wide-open tight end, he probably would have had a chance to run for the first down.

And now for our grand finale. Yes, this was the lone defensive snap that Nick Niemann played all season. There’s some context needed here, but the two-point play, which was the difference between the Packers needing a touchdown or a field goal on the final drive of the game, did come down to a player whose first snap in Green Bay (Niemann was picked up after the preseason) was this one.

First of all, the Packers are in their goal line package with six defensive linemen, four linebackers and McKinney, which they’ve played throughout the year in goal line situations. That, in itself, is not a bad situation.

Chicago baited Green Bay into that personnel grouping by playing heavy offensive personnel, with an extra offensive lineman and three tight ends on the field. When the Packers play some lighter offensive groupings in these spots, they will sometimes play their base 4-3 defense or nickel set.

The Bears broke the huddle and lined up in a tight formation, as expected from this heavy grouping, but then scattered, with all three tight ends lining up away from the core of the formation. The Packers played man coverage because there’s not much else that you can do when you have six defensive linemen on the field, with McKinney, Niemann and fellow backup linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper (#59) covering the tight ends outside.

Niemann was lined up on the solo tight end at the bottom of the screen, who created just enough room to score a touchdown at the sideline.

As a reminder, this occurred after Cooper sustained an injury. Had Cooper not gone out, the four linebackers would have been Walker, Cooper, McDuffie and Hopper. With Cooper out, it created the perfect circumstances for Niemann to give up points. It had to come in a goal-line look where the Bears baited the Packers with a heavy personnel grouping, only after an injury at the position. But Chicago was prepared for it.

Shoutout to Hopper, who came down with a red zone interception in the second half. Outside of that, the linebackers’ performances through the air were mostly poor against the Bears.

Here’s to hoping that in 2026, the linebackers are coached by someone who has any previous experience at coaching the position at a professional level. Both Walker and Cooper seemed to have dropped from how they played by the end of the 2024 season, when the unit was led by Anthony Campanile, who is now the defensive coordinator of the Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that gave up fewer than 20 points per game in 2025 in Campanile’s first year with the program.

I hope this is the last time I ever have to watch film of this game.