This season has been full of unlucky injuries that the Green Bay Packers have had to find ways to overcome. They haven’t really been the recipient of much good injury news on the opposite side heading into a game, but that seems to be changing as they prepare for the rematch with the Chicago Bears.
On Thursday, the Bears announced they are ruling out both of their wide receivers, Rome Odunze and Luther Burden III. Without Devonte Wyatt and Micah Parsons available to rush Caleb Williams, this version of the Packers defense needs all the help it can get. The real question is whether they will be able to take advantage of it.
Odunze is missing his third straight game with a foot injury. The first, of course, was the game against Green Bay two weeks ago at Lambeau. He tried to give it a go last week against the Cleveland Browns, but dropped out after a pregame workout because he aggravated the foot.
Burden suffered an ankle injury against the Browns. Odunze has become one of Williams’ favorite targets, but Burden has been having an excellent season for Chicago and has been shouldering a lot of the load with Odunze out of the lineup. Before he was carted off the field on Sunday, he was the team’s leading receiver with six catches for 84 yards.
Ben Johnson will need to dig deep into his bag of tricks to try to make up for the loss in the passing game. Odunze and Burden’s absences will mean more playing time for lesser-used receivers, including return specialist Devin Duvernay and season-long backup Jahdae Walker.
Duvernay has only two catches on the season, one coming against the Packers in Week 14 for 24 yards. Walker has only played in seven games this season, mostly on special teams. He has logged just eight snaps on offense in 2025 and has recorded no stats. The 2025 undrafted free agent is still looking for his first career reception and will likely have his best chance this Saturday due to the lack of depth at wideout.
So, how can this Green Bay defense take advantage of a depleted Bears passing game? The most obvious answer is that without two of Chicago’s best receiving options, they should be able to commit to stopping the run consistently. Not much of the stats have changed since the first showdown.
The Bears still have the second-best rushing attack in the NFL, averaging 151.9 yards per game on the ground. They ran the ball well in their Week 14 matchup, rushing for 138 yards on 32 carries with a 4.3 yards-per-attempt average. Running the football and taking the pressure off Williams is the way the Bears want to win football games. Green Bay’s best chance to win is reversing that trend and slowing the game down.
The Packers have been a pretty good rush defense on the season, ranking eighth with 100.5 yards allowed per game. But that’s with Parsons in the mix, and he makes everything on defense that much easier.
He showed that he’s a good run defender last week, contrary to what Jerry Jones wants to believe, when he forced the fumble on the Broncos’ first drive of the game. Without Parsons, they can still have a good rush defense; it will just look a little different.
What’s the best way to stop the run? More bodies at the line of scrimmage. What’s the downfall of committing more bodies at the line of scrimmage? Fear of getting beaten over the top and allowing big plays. That’s where the loss of Odunze and Burden III comes in.
While the Bears still have D.J. Moore and two good pass-catching tight ends in Cole Kmet and Colston Loveland, you trust your secondary to be able to cover those three options while allowing your linebackers (or an extra safety) to play up and stop the run. This time around, the Packers should be able to let Isaiah McDuffie, Xavier McKinney, and Co. fill those rush gaps and attempt to make the Bears as one-dimensional as possible.
If the Packers can make the Bears one-dimensional and set them up in consistent third-and-long situations, then even Green Bay’s beleaguered pass rush post-Parsons should be able to get home on occasion and affect Williams. Add in the fact that Williams is still dead last in the league in completion percentage, and it only highlights how important it is for them to be able to run the football. The more they put the game in his hands, the more likely it is that he will crumble.
Just go back and watch the last play from two weeks ago.
Another big way their absence can affect this matchup is that Johnson and the Bears rely heavily on yards after the catch from their pass catchers. While Williams is highly ranked (seventh) among starting quarterbacks with 11.8 yards per completion, he’s also sitting at just 5.9 air yards per completion.
Yards after the catch (YAC) is the difference between those two numbers. Who’s Chicago’s top receiver in YAC yards in 2025?
If you said Luther Burden III, you would be correct.
Seventy-six percent of Burden III’s receptions have gone for 13.3 yards per reception, with 7.1 of those yards coming after the catch. Add in that Burden III has been one of the most-targeted receivers in football since November 9, with five per game, and that’s a recipe sure to keep Johnson up at night.
If the Bears don’t have to completely re-do their offense with the absence of Odunze and Burden III, they will be close to it. They are losing their best yards-after-catch option from the wide receiver position – running back D’Andre Swift has a slightly higher number – in Burden III, and their best deep-threat option in Odunze.
The Packers can fully commit to shutting down Chicago’s run game and making unproven receivers beat them. Without Parsons, you feel a lot better if Jeff Hafley is committing extra bodies and leaving Keisean Nixon and Carrington Valentine on an island against the likes of Devin Duvernay and Jahdae Walker than against Chicago’s top receivers. If the Packers can do that, they will leave Saturday night firmly in control of the NFC North.
