Beating Aaron Rodgers this weekend could well be the Bears' biggest hurdle of the season

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Talk to anyone at Halas Hall and you can tell that the Bears' Week 1 heartbreaker is still fresh in their mind. 

Fast forward 14 weeks and the Bears are firmly in the drivers seat, looking to clinch a NFC North title for the first time since 2010, and to do so at home for the first time since 2006. 

Standing between the Chicago and a division title just happens to be Aaron Rodgers, who, to put it gently, has had the Bears' number over his career. It's been three years since Rodgers lost to the Bears. In the 20 games he's played against them, the QB is 16-4 with a 108.3 QB rating. He's thrown 45 touchdowns against them, the most of any team he's played. So what makes him so consistently able to send Bears fans home unhappy?

"Well, his talent level is extremely high," defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said. "His experience level is extremely high, and all of his experiences have come in the same scheme, so when you combine talent, NFL experience, scheme experience, that’s what you get."

"He just refuses to lose, he refuses to go down," linebacker Danny Trevanthan added. "He refuses to let a play just be a play.  He wants to extend it and make it a great play each time he gets the ball. He does a good job with his legs of getting guys open. He does a great job of creating situations where they work at and practice it some. We just have got to be on our Ps and Qs. We know what he likes to do. We know that if we let him get started he can really tear you up."

This Sunday's matchup, however, brings a new and interesting wrinkle into recent Bears-Packers history: it'll be the first time that Bears see Rodgers without the scheming of head coach Mike McCarthy, who was fired two weeks ago after an unflattering home loss to the 2-9 Arizona Cardinals. Despite the unusually tumultuous season in Green Bay, the QB's play has remained consistent - no one has less interceptions than Rodgers, who threw his first of the year last week against Buffalo. 

New starting nickle corner Sherrick McManis, when asked how Rodgers has kept his interception numbers so low, had the best response:

"I have no idea." 

"He’s a great quarterback," cornerback Prince Amukamara said. "You don’t even want to call him conservative, he just takes calculated chances and he’s very precise and the receivers help him out in not throwing picks, also. So we’re going to have to do a good job and continue to do a good job of getting the ball, somehow." 

Between a Bears team that leads the NFL in turnover differential and a Green Bay QB who now owns now owns the NFL record for most consecutive pass attempts (368) without an interception, something's got to give, right?

"That doesn’t excite me, 368 passes, I’ll tell you that," head coach Matt Nagy said. "He protects the football. And he has extreme confidence in how he does it. And he’s been doing it for a long time. So the No. 1 thing we have to do is try to break that. But there’s a reason why it’s so hard and why he does that. He has seen a lot of different defenses come at him. He has obviously seen our defensive scheme.

"... it’ll be a big-time challenge for us. But I think our guys will be up for it coming off of the way they just played against the Rams. Their confidence will be high." 

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