The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 18 matchup between the Packers and Bears.
Find a breakdown of every Week 18 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.
| Chicago | Rank | @ | Green Bay | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.0 | Spread | -3.0 | ||
| 20.5 | Implied Total | 23.5 | ||
| 21.9 | 16 | Points/Gm | 22.9 | 11 |
| 22.6 | 20 | Points All./Gm | 21.3 | 14 |
| 65.7 | 5 | Plays/Gm | 62.0 | 21 |
| 60.9 | 7 | Opp. Plays/Gm | 63.4 | 13 |
| 5 | 24 | Off. Yards/Play | 5.5 | 9 |
| 5.2 | 17 | Def. Yards/Play | 5.4 | 21 |
| 48.43% | 3 | Rush% | 41.73% | 18 |
| 51.57% | 30 | Pass% | 58.27% | 15 |
| 37.03% | 4 | Opp. Rush % | 46.11% | 29 |
| 62.97% | 29 | Opp. Pass % | 53.89% | 4 |
Packers Playoff Scenarios: Green Bay is still drawing live for the postseason.
The Packers can claim the No. 6 seed with a win and a Rams loss.
Green Bay can end up as the No. 7 seed in the following ways, but the easiest path for them is to just win this game and they are in.
The other avenues that they have:
- GB win/tie + LAR win/tie
- GB tie + SEA loss/tie + NO loss/tie
- GB tie + SEA tie + TB loss/tie
- GB tie + SEA loss + TB loss
- GB loss + SEA loss + TB loss + MIN loss/tie
- GB loss + SEA loss + NO loss + MIN loss/tie
Elimination Alert: The Bears have been eliminated from the postseason, but we should expect their core starters to play in full here except for Cole Kmet, who has been dealing with a knee injury.
I am going to write them up as such.
Quarterback
Jordan Love: Love stayed hot on Sunday night, completing 72.7% of his passes for three touchdowns and adding another touchdown on the ground.
Closing the week as QB2 (28.4 points), Love has now spiked for QB1 scoring weeks in six of his past seven games, with three top-five scoring weeks.
Love has thrown multiple touchdown passes in seven of his past eight games. He is now third in the NFL with 30 touchdown passes, one behind Brock Purdy (who likely does not play or does sparingly in Week 18) and two behind Dak Prescott.
Both of these teams have come a long way since they met in the season opener.
Love was QB3 (23.0 points) in that game. He completed just 55.6% of his passes but threw three touchdowns.
The Packers have changed things up from early in the season, attacking with a quicker passing game.
Over his past seven games, Love has an 11.3% deep passing rate (20th) while 30.8% of his passes have traveled 10 or more yards downfield (16th).
Love had a 15.7% deep target rate (second in the NFL) with a 36.0% rate of throws 10 yards or further downfield (fifth).
His 9.2 air yards per throw went from third in the league down to 7.8 yards since (15th).
What that has done is make Love’s deep passes more effective.
Love has a 110.7 rating on deep throws (QB8) over these past seven games after a 48.9 rating (26th) before.
Love has been so good of late that he is a fantasy QB1, but he runs into a tougher ask here to run back his complete Week 17 output.
On the flip side, this Chicago pass defense is much better than the one Love faced in the season opener.
Over their past 11 games, the Bears have allowed a 63.1% completion rate (13th), 6.0 yards per pass attempt (second), and have a league-high 19 interceptions.
The one blemish is that they still have allowed a 4.2% touchdown rate over that span, 21st in the league.
Justin Fields: Fields is closing this fantasy season strongly.
Ending last week as QB3 (25.2 points), Fields has now been a top-five fantasy scorer in three of the past four weeks.
He has delivered four QB1 scoring weeks over his six starts since returning to the lineup in Week 11.
Fields has done that without throwing multiple touchdown passes in a game since Week 5.
He is averaging only 10.4 passing points per game over that stretch but is also averaging 9.6 rushing points per game.
We are still rolling out Fields as an upside QB1 to close the season, but the Packers have given Fields issues as a passer.
Fields was QB16 (14.5 points) in the season opener and is now 0-5 against the Packers.
He has thrown just four touchdown passes in those games.
Green Bay plays largely passive against Fields.
They have blitzed him 23.7% of the time over those five meetings, below their 29.1% blitz rate overall.
When Green Bay has blitzed Fields, he has averaged 8.8 Y/A with two touchdowns and zero interceptions.
In Week 1, the Packers blitzed Fields on just 15 dropbacks, but he was 9-of-11 for 96 yards (8.7 Y/A) with a touchdown when they did.
When the Packers have not blitzed Fields, he is averaging 6.6 Y/A with two touchdowns and seven interceptions.
In Week 1, Fields was 15-of-26 (57.7%) for 4.6 Y/A with an interception when Green Bay played coverage over emphasizing sending extra pass rushers.
This Green Bay defense has lost several pieces and parts since that matchup.
They did rally on Sunday night to shut down the Minnesota passing game, but that was after allowing back-to-back top-10 scoring weeks to Baker Mayfield (29.0 points) and Bryce Young (22.2 points).
Running Back
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