Super Bowls will always be the barometer for NFL success. Tom Brady and the Patriots will remain the gold standard for quite some time. Behind Lombardi trophies, legacy enthusiasts may look at individual awards like MVPs, or perhaps Conference Championships to a lesser extent — although nobody wants to be remembered as just a Conference champion — it's just a fancy way of saying Super Bowl loser.
Behind these classic prizes, I would suggest "all-time wins" as the next most prestigious measure of franchise success in NFL history. Whether or not my football team wins on Sunday will literally define my mood on Monday morning and it'll likely linger for a few days after that.
Rooting for a team who wins often — even if they don't claim the greatest prize in the sport — is significantly more enjoyable than rooting for a team who loses.
As the longest serving franchise in the NFL, the Chicago Bears were the first NFL team to ever reach 300 all-time wins. And 400 wins. And 500 wins. And 600 wins. And 700 wins.
Nobody else really came close.
Early in the 1996 season, a season where the Packers claimed their third ever Super Bowl, the Bears won their 600th game ever.
At that point Packers sat in second place at 529 — over 70 games off the Bears pace! The Packers could go 16-0 for 4 straight seasons with the Bears going winless and Chicago still would've held a 7-game advantage on the all-time leaderboard.
Over the next 9 years, Brett Favre's Packers would not endure a single losing season, meanwhile the Bears suffered through their darkest stretch since the early 1970s, with just one winning season record surrounded by 4-win campaigns.
Entering 2005, the Packers had halved the gap between the teams to just 34 games. In doing so, they also pulled away from the floundering Giants, who had been hot on Green Bay's heels as they entered the 1990's following Bill Parcell's outstanding coaching term.
A couple of down years for Green Bay in 2005 and 2006 while the Bears simultaneously reached a Super Bowl allowed Chicago to extend the gap to almost 50 games again.
Little did they know that during this time, the Packers had just acquired the man who would alter this race more than anyone who came before him.
Aaron Rodgers will be remembered for a lot of things. But above all else, he may be remembered as the owner of the Chicago Bears.
It's as if he knew or cared about this race. In a world where players, coaches and fans only care about the one Super Bowl that lies in front of them, it's as if Rodgers knew in the back of his head that those games against the Bears counted for two in this fake, made-up little race to be the winningest team in NFL history.
But Rodgers' impact was not immediate. While the new era of Packers were getting up to speed, the Bears became the first team to ever reach 700 wins… in 2010. Later that year, just like in 1996, the Packers went on to win the Super Bowl.
Over the next few seasons, the Packers roared as a perennial contender. However the Bears weren't the complete laughing stock which memory sometimes depicts them as — Chicago went a respectable 48-48 from 2010 to 2015.
While the Packers utterly commanded Chicago in head-to-head matchups throughout the first stint of the Rodgers era going on a resounding 15-2 run between 2011 and 2017, the Bears STILL remained ahead by 12 games.
In one of the most historic games of the rivalry, the Bears were primed to pick up a milestone 750th all-time victory on opening night of the 2018 season in Lambeau Field. You know how the rest of that story goes by now.
But by that point, it looked as though Chicago had touched out the storm. They won twice as many games as the Packers that season and it looked as though Rodgers' reign of terror had come to an end. Surely the Bears, with 769 wins and 13 more than Green Bay entering 2019, would push ahead and plant their flag as the first team with 800 wins in NFL history.
Enter Matt LaFleur. Green Bays' phenomenal stretch of 39 regular season wins in 3 years at the beginning of the LaFleur era had never before been achieved in franchise history. By September of LaFleur's third year in charge, the Packers had tied it up. Even when the Packers tripped up slightly in 2022 with a 8-9 record, the Bears bottomed out at 3-14.
As we enter 2024, the Packers (799 wins) sita narrow 6 games ahead of the Bears (793). Barring something unforeseen, Green Bay will become the first team to ever reach 800 wins. They will complete a comeback from what was once a deficit of 75 games.
Chicago's win total sits at 8.5 for this year. If they can win 7 games, they too will reach the 800-mark. And we know exactly what happened in years when the Bears reached 600 and 700 victories!
As Jordan Love signs the largest contract in the NFL, and Caleb Williams takes the reins in Chicago, a new era of this rivalry feels like it may properly begin. As we've seen in the years gone past, 6 games is absolutely nothing. One bad year could swing the balance entirely.
Really and truly, this race is to 1,000 wins.
Whenever someone reaches the 1k mark, these smaller milestones will feel inconsequential.
As teams average around 9 wins per season, it'll likely be another 20 years before that conversation will arise. It may not be close by then. Who knows? But no two players may have a bigger say on the race from 800 to 1000 than Love and Williams.
