It's hard to imagine a more dramatic reversal of fortunes in an NFL rivalry than what we saw in the historic Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers rivalry in 2025. Not only did the Bears end the Packers' season with a miraculous Wild Card win, but head coach Ben Johnson made himself Public Enemy No. 1 among Packers fans when he gave Packers head coach Matt LaFleur an icy handshake after the game.

The disrespect Packers fans felt from that moment apparently has not healed with time, at least not for Packers superfan Lil Wayne. The five-time Grammy Award winning rapper released a new song this week called 'Special Ops' to serve as a kind of Packers anthem for the 2026 season. And while he fires barbs at every team in the NFC North, Lil Wayne reserved multiple lines specifically to call out Johnson.

"We gon' ball till we fall and get back up/If the coach in Chicago want to act up/We want all of the smoke, no tobacco," Lil Wayne rhymes. He then takes it a step further in a later verse, "Tell your coach put his shirt back on/I got bear fur on my floor at home/We gon' make you eat all them words/And may they taste like provolone/And the Bears still suck."

The Bears-Packers rivalry is hotter than it's ever been

It's almost hard to believe how fiery the Bears-Packers rivalry has become over the course of just one season. A year ago, this was still more of a one-sided beatdown than a true rivalry, with the Packers having won 11 games in a row before the Bears squeaked out a dramatic Week 18 win over the Packers at the end of the 2024 season.

We all know what happened after that. The Bears beat the Packers twice, stole the division crown, and became one of the hottest picks as a dark horse Super Bowl contender for 2026. Whereas most Packers players and fans had previously seen themselves as too good to be involved in typical rivalry shenanigans, we've now seen Javon Bullard poke the bear, if you'll pardon my pun, while Keisean Nixon changed his tune about that Wild Card loss.

The Bottom Line

Ben Johnson breathing new life into this bitter rivalry has proven to be great news for both sides. Yes, even for Packers fans. The Bears-Packers rivalry stretches back over 100 years and is the biggest in the NFL, one of the biggest in all of professional sports, and seeing it become such a lopsided affair took the fun out of these matches. But now that the Bears have struck back, it's up to the Packers to come out swinging in 2026 and recover some of their pride.

And speaking of striking back, Chicago Bears superfan and three-time Grammy Award winning rapper Common should consider a song of his own to push back on Lil Wayne's verses.

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