Thursday night’s tilt between the Bears and Packers possesses enough emotion and hype to stand on its own. The history and sheer star power involved in professional football’s oldest rivalry has people purchase stadium seats in droves, and gravitate their television dial to the big game. But in actuality, the 199th meeting of Bears-Packers is merely the flame traveling down the cartoonish fuse that triggers the rest of the dynamite known as the 2019 NFL season.
Over the course of the next months, 256 regular season games will have been played. 11 postseason matchups, full of heartbreak and indescribable joy, will unfold over the ensuing manic January.