{"id":872483,"date":"2026-10-06T06:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872483\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T06:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:36:11","slug":"matt-lafleur-explains-his-reason-for-not-taking-the-bait-from-ben-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872483\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt LaFleur explains his reason for not taking the bait from Ben Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bears coach Ben Johnson has no qualms about making his disdain for the Packers known. Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur takes a different approach to the situation.<\/p>\n

LaFleur explained his decision not to take Ben Johnson\u2019s bait to reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause this game is about players and so we\u2019ll keep it about the players<\/a>,\u201d LaFleur said, via Matt Schneidman of The Athletic. \u201cI\u2019m not the one out there they\u2019re playing. . . . Don\u2019t get me wrong. I love the rivalry. It\u2019s awesome. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s intense. You can feel it on gameday. You can feel it throughout the course of the week and also the significance, I mean, they\u2019re the defending [NFC] North champions. So what a great opportunity, great challenge for us in our home stadium to play against the defending champs.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Johnson\u2019s part, he sent a clear message to his players about Sunday\u2019s game at Lambeau Field.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants to beat them really bad like everyone else in the room, like every Chicago fan. Beat them real bad, and make them quit<\/a>,\u201d receiver Luther Burden III said, via Cassie Carlson of Fox32.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s anti-Green Bay antics have included declaring in the locker room after a playoff win, \u201cFuck the Packers! Fuck them!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bears and the Packers, they should not like each othe<\/a>r,\u201d Johnson said in a Scouting Combine-week appearance on PFT Live. \u201cI think it\u2019s as simple as that. And I think that\u2019s gonna make this rivalry, this game, something that people are going to watch here going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

For fans, that\u2019s absolutely true. Players and coaches are interchangeable. Coaches can be nomads, hopping from job to job regardless of where the job may be. And they generally refrain from making things personal because today\u2019s enemy could be tomorrow\u2019s employer.<\/p>\n

Johnson, to his credit, isn\u2019t willing to play the game. He earned his stripes with the Packers as a rival (Johnson and the Lions spoiled Aaron Rodgers\u2019s last game in Green Bay), and he\u2019s in position to be the coach of the Bears for a long time. He could become as beloved as Mike Ditka, in time.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s off to a good start. In part because he says what most Bears fans believe about the Packers.<\/p>\n

As to this weekend\u2019s game, which was moved out of the higher-profile 4:25 p.m. ET window for 1:00 p.m. ET, Johnson surely will say, privately and\/or publicly, that the flex didn\u2019t happen because of the Bears but because (as Johnson is more likely to say privately but who knows?), \u201cThe Packers suck.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bears coach Ben Johnson has no qualms about making his disdain for the Packers known. Green Bay coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-872483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}