After watching last night’s game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, one phrase comes to mind: a beautiful disaster.

Packers 55, Bears 14.

It’s always nice when your team blows out the opponent but when it’s a bitter rival like the Bears, a 41-point margin of victory is just that much sweeter. Chicago pretty much had no prayer from the opening coin toss. After they punted to the Packers on their first drive, Aaron Rodgers took Green Bay right down the field in a surgical drive to give the Packers a 7-0 lead.

Then Jay Cutler did his thing and Green Bay was soon up 14-0. The rout was on.

So without further ado, here are the Game Balls for the Packers in their spanking of the Bears last night.

Game Balls

QB Aaron Rodgers

Just when you think you’ve seen it all from the Green Bay quarterback, he goes and does that.

Six touchdown passes in the first half. SIX. What’s even scarier is he was oh-so-close to number seven before being taken out of the game early in the third quarter.

Rodgers now becomes the fourth quarterback to have multiple six-touchdown games in their career, joining Peyton Manning (3), Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger (2 each). While it would have been awesome to see Rodgers break the franchise record and get his seventh, there is no need to risk a Super Bowl run chasing a record in Week 10.

LB Clay Matthews

Clay Matthews: inside linebacker?

The Packers tried something different in their second matchup against the Bears, moving Matthews to the inside after Matt Forte ran all over the Green Bay defense in Chicago. The inside linebacker position has long been a weakness on this defense and moving perhaps your best pass rusher to that position might seem a little counterproductive.

Well, it worked. Matthews was his usual active self and was greatly beneficial in stopping the run. He was even moved back to his natural outside position on obvious passing downs and scored a sack against Cutler.

Matthews had his best game of the season and the experiment with him inside needs to continue. It will be interesting to see how offenses attack him in the middle but for now, he’s a pretty good band-aid at the position.

WR Jordy Nelson

Another game, another stellar performance from Jordy Nelson.

Why the Bears continuously left Nelson wide open is beyond explanation, but great receivers take advantage of the opponent’s incompetence and that’s what Nelson did against the Bears.

Six catches, 152 yards and two touchdowns. That’s over an average of 25 yards per catch.

Just another day at the office for the most underrated receiver in the NFL.

Honorary: Jay Cutler

Cutler is beginning to make a legitimate argument to be one of the greatest quarterbacks in Packers history.

Two more interceptions plus a fumble against the Packers helped keep him with only one win over the Packers since coming to Chicago in 2009.

His defense was putrid but Cutler did them no favors either by giving the Packers a short field via his aforementioned three turnovers.

Same old Jay.

Lame Calls



CB Sam Shields



It’s tough to criticize a player for not making roughly a 100-yard pick-six but Shields was gifted one from Cutler that would have put the game out of reach even sooner.

He’s being paid like one of the best corners in the league and it would have been one of the best Cutler vs Packers plays ever. Shields has to make that play, especially if the game would have been close.

Mike McCarthy

It’s not a Packer game without a boneheaded McCarthy challenge.

While it’s admirable the Green Bay coach wanted to humiliate their arch rival even further than the scoreboard already allowed, challenging three-yard completions does nothing except flush a timeout down the drain.

Still, McCarthy had his team ready to play. This Lame Call is for that challenge and that challenge alone.

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Kris Burke is a sports writer covering the Green Bay Packers for AllGreenBayPackers.com and WTMJ in Milwaukee. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) and his work has been linked to by sites such as National Football Post and CBSSports.com. Follow @KrisLBurke

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