It’s no secret that the Bears and Packers have one of the most heated rivalries in the NFL. When you have two blue-blood franchises that are located nearby and have been at each other’s throats since the 1920s, you’re naturally going to have plenty of hype when the two teams match up.
Each week going forward, we’re going to highlight some of the connections that the Bears’ coaching staff and roster each have with their opponent, as well as their opponent’s ties to Chicago. This week, we’re looking
at the overlap between the Bears and the Packers.
Usually, there’s a decent amount of overlap from a roster perspective between the Bears and the Packers. We’ve seen players like Jimmy Graham, Julius Peppers, Adrian Amos, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, and Marcedes Lewis suit up for both teams in recent years. Going into 2026, though, there aren’t as many roster connections as usual.
The only player on the Packers who has played for the Bears before is defensive tackle Jonathan Ford, who spent the 2024 and 2025 seasons in Chicago. He played in 12 games for the Bears across his tenure, combining for 13 tackles and one tackle for loss. He was originally a seventh-round pick by Green Bay in the 2022 NFL Draft and spent three seasons there, though he never played in a game before the Bears claimed him off the Packers’ practice squad in December of 2024.
Ford rejoined Green Bay late in 2025 and has played in all four games for them so far in 2026. He currently ranks No. 101 out of 118 qualified defensive tackles with a 70.4 PFN DT Impact grade, which generally places him as a mediocre backup option.
Nobody on the Bears’ active roster has played for the Packers before. However, practice squad defensive back Anthony Johnson Jr. was originally drafted by Green Bay in the seventh round of the 2023 NFL Draft. He played in 12 games for the team in 2023, starting in four. In that time, he tallied 24 tackles, an interception, and three pass deflections. The Packers released him during roster cuts before 2024, and he spent some time with the Giants before signing with the Bears this May.
There’s a good amount of overlap between the two teams’ coaching staffs, though. On Green Bay’s side, their quarterbacks coach and assistant head coach is Luke Getsy, who was the Bears’ offensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023. Tight ends coach John Dunn was a football assistant and a offensive assistant for the Bears in 2016 and 2017, while offensive line coach Luke Butkus was previously an offensive assistant and assistant offensive line coach for Chicago between 2007 and 2009. It’s worth noting that Butkus had a tryout with the Bears as a player in 2002, and as the name suggests, he is the nephew of Hall of Fame linebacker Dick Butkus.
No current Bears coaches have coached for the Packers before, but two of them have played for Green Bay. The most notable of which is Al Harris, Chicago’s defensive backs coach and defensive passing game coordinator. He spent seven seasons as a cornerback for the Packers, making the Pro Bowl twice and earning a second-team All-Pro nomination in 2007. He was enshrined in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame after his playing career and received a Super Bowl ring with them in the 2010 season, though he was injured and eventually released that year.
The Bears’ safeties coach and assistant defensive backs coach, Matt Giordano, also played for the Packers, albeit in a much shorter stint. He spent 2009 with Green Bay and played in five games there as a safety, notching two tackles. The team signed him a few weeks into the season, though he was inactive for most of its games. There’s no confirmation on whether Giordano has any relation to the family that owns the Chicago deep dish pizza chain.
