After a three-and-out late in the third quarter, the Green Bay Packers offense stood on the sidelines and watched the Bears march down the field to tie the game at 21. It wasn’t until the eight-minute mark that Green Bay got the ball back. Before they took the field for what turned out to be the game-winning drive, while they watched Chicago gashing their defense, running back Josh Jacobs had two words of wisdom for his teammates. “Don’t blink.”
Jacobs led his team to victory from both the backfield and the sidelines
It was not a comfortable situation. The Packers had just put their defense back on the field after failing to do anything with the rock on their own. The Bears had already scored on each of their second-half possessions. Now, in a 21-14 game, they were on their way to going three-for-three. With Chicago at 9-3 and Green Bay at 8-3-1, whoever won would claim first place in the NFC North and control their own destiny moving forward. Even at home – perhaps more so, with the field flipping to hostile Chicago in two weeks – the pressure was high.
“One of the main things I was saying on the sideline was don’t blink,” Jacobs said when asked how the team responded to the high-stakes circumstances. “We knew we was going to get the ball back. We didn’t know how it was going to go, whether the defense stopping them or not. We didn’t really care as the offense. We just don’t blink. We got to go out there and still play our ball.”
After the Bears punched it in, Jacobs himself kicked off the Packers drive with an 11-yard run. Four plays later, he gashed the Chicago defense for 21 yards, pushing the ball inside the 10. Then Jacobs ran it in from the two for his 12th touchdown of the season. That gave him 86 yards on 20 carries for the day.
Armed with a 28-21 lead, the defense did come up big in the end, picking off Caleb Williams in the end zone to dash the Bears’ hopes of a comeback.
Tork Mason/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
For Jacobs and the offense, even watching helplessly from the sidelines, they never wavered from the confidence that they would do the job when called on.
“We knew what we had and I feel like the belief was there. I feel like a lot of the guys, nobody really flinched when it was time. So yeah, shout out to them.”
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