Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers admitted that his hatred for the Chicago Bears was spurred by Chicago’s rejection of him in the 2005 NFL Draft.
When Aaron Rodgers screamed, “I still own you!” at Soldier Field, it was an emotional victory for the self-professed greatest Packers quarterback of all time.
The Packers have now surpassed the Bears in every major winnable metric, and Rodgers seizes every opportunity to remind Chicago of that fact.
As it turns out, Rodgers’ scorn isn’t just professional — it’s personal. His feud with the Chicago Bears began as soon as the team overlooked him in the 2005 NFL Draft.
Rodgers sat down with Milwaukee Bucks star Serge Ibaka for Ibaka’s YouTube show, “How Hungry Are You?“, and while Rodgers was entirely unserious with most of his responses, this one was genuine.
“Which team that passed on you do you like to play against the most?” Ibaka asked. Rodgers couldn’t help but laugh as Ibaka spoke, the answer burning in his mind.
“Chicago,” Rodgers answered. “The Bears and the Packers, that’s a rivalry.”
Aaron Rodgers’s hatred for Bears began before the Packers drafted him
Ibaka pressed further, pointing out that aside from the franchise rivalry, this was a team that passed up on the opportunity to draft Rodgers.
“They had the No. 4 pick,” Rodgers replied.
“They passed on me still. I love playing them,” Rodgers said with a smile. “Love beating them.”
“I think, in my career, I’m like 22-5 against them or something, a really good record,” Rodgers continued. “You know, last year, we played them, I scored this touchdown late in the game and put it away. And I was knocked down on the play, and I was on one knee looking up in the stands, and all I saw was everybody giving me the finger, like, ‘What?!’ So I said, ‘I own you!’”
Rodgers ended up on the winning side of this decision in more ways than one. The Bears’ fateful choices in the 2005 NFL Draft may have cost the team a Super Bowl, according to Sports Mockery’s Erik Lambert.
“Just like that, a future Bears super villain had been born,” Lambert wrote of the decision to pass on Rodgers.
While the Bears finally seem to have a franchise quarterback in Justin Fields, Rodgers knew back then that the team could have drafted a game-changer with their No. 4 pick. Without Rodgers, the Bears missed out on another Super Bowl, plenty of playoff berths and the edge in the Bears-Packers rivalry.
And Aaron Rodgers relishes that fact to this day.