Monday Night Football to feature undefeated NFC North rivals

The NFL’s most familiar foes will meet again Monday night at Soldier Field, and the NFC North rivalry will have a decidedly nostalgic feel.

Why? Because neither the Green Bay Packers nor the Chicago Bears have a loss.

The Packers and Bears are 2-0, and the last time they played each other when they were both undefeated in Week 3 or later was 1962. In that matchup of 2-0 teams, Green Bay crushed Chicago, 49-0, at Lambeau Field. The Packers won the NFL championship that year.

Monday night’s showdown figures to be much closer, considering the way Chicago’s defense is playing. The Bears, who have beaten Detroit and Dallas, have forced three turnovers a game and given up just one touchdown on offense, to the Cowboys.

Still, Chicago’s players are relishing their role as underdog in this one -- the Packers are favored by three -- even if the Bears might be exaggerating the us-against-the-world angle just a bit.

“Nobody’s picking us to win,” Bears safety Chris Harris told reporters last week. “We like that. That’s fine with us. In the locker room, we’re all we have anyway, so we don’t let outside forces, outside voices dictate how we play.”

The Bears, who are 4-1 on “Monday Night Football” over the last four years, also are reaping the benefits of great play from quarterback Jay Cutler. He had a 136.7 passer rating against the Cowboys for his fourth consecutive triple-digit rating, dating to the last two games of Chicago’s 2009 season.

Green Bay has an elite quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, and one of the best collections of receivers in football. He no longer has the services of No. 1 running back Ryan Grant, however, as Grant suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the opener. That leaves the Packers with Brandon Jackson and John Kuhn, both of whom are coming off ho-hum performances in a blowout of Buffalo.

“It’s a little difficult when you use running back by committee,” Coach Mike McCarthy said. “It’s a little harder for those guys to get into the flow and I understand that. So we’ll continue to go that way and try to spread that ball around.”

At the moment, the Packer who’s playing the best is on the other side of the ball. Former USC linebacker Clay Matthews Jr. is coming off consecutive three-sack games, the first player in club history to achieve that feat.

sam.farmer@latimes.com