Bears Go for Fake, Lose, 17-3 : NFC: Favre passes for one Packer touchdown, runs for the other one.
Mike Ditka switched from Jim Harbaugh to Peter Tom Willis, but together they couldn’t match Brett Favre.
Favre, playing with a separated left shoulder, passed for one touchdown and ran for another Sunday as the Green Bay Packers dealt the Chicago Bears their fourth consecutive loss, 17-3.
“I didn’t even think about it,” Favre said of his shoulder. “It felt good but at that stage you don’t think about anything but the score.
“It was a great win, hopefully we’re on a roll. We’ve beaten Philadelphia and Chicago together and not many teams have done that.”
Favre faked a handoff into the line and hid the ball behind his back before throwing to Sterling Sharpe on a 49-yard touchdown pass play to give the Packers (5-6) a 10-3 lead near the end of the first quarter, and the Bears never recovered.
The Bears (4-7) haven’t won since beating the Packers, 30-10, last month at Green Bay. The Packers are 3-1 since then.
“It’s called ‘the sucker play’ and we couldn’t even make it work in practice,” Favre said of the touchdown pass play. “But the line did an outstanding job and Sterling made his usual great catch.”
Early in the fourth quarter, Favre ran five yards on a broken pass play for another touchdown to cap a 74-yard drive. He completed 16 of 24 passes for 209 yards.
Ditka changed quarterbacks, for “No reason,” he said, but it didn’t work.
“They told me they were going to try P.T. and I think (the reason) was pretty evident,” said Harbaugh, who completed eight of 18 passes for 97 yards.
Willis, who was 16 of 23 for 160 yards, might have put the Bears in the end zone except for two key holding penalties.
Keith Van Horne’s penalty nullified a 15-yard pass to Anthony Morgan and Stan Thomas’ penalty wiped out a 29-yard touchdown pass to Wendell Davis.
“Well, this is starting to sound like a broken record,” Ditka said. “We have to give them credit. They played good and kept us off balance. They played better and the team that plays best should win the game.”
Green Bay’s Edgar Bennett, filling for injured Vince Workman, carried 29 times for 107 yards.
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