What’s it like to switch sides in the Bears-Packers rivalry? Weird, painful, rewarding

On Aug. 7, 2023, an X post from the Chicago Bears read, "18 years in & love for the game is still goin' strong." A photo showed Marcedes Lewis signing his Bears contract at their team facility.

It quickly became apparent this wasn't the typical move from one team to another.

"Bitchboi," one X user responded.

"We don't need him," another posted.

"Traitor," wrote another.

But the reactions from teammates were much different.

"I'm going to miss you," Aaron Rodgers texted.

So it was with mixed feelings that the veteran tight end crossed the Wisconsin-Illinois state line. He cherished his time in Green Bay but was eager to embrace everything about being a Bear.

"Obviously, we're human beings," Lewis says. "When you go to a different team in the same division, there is going to be a period when it's a little unnatural."

. Then he did much more

Going from the Packers to the Bears was easier than it could have been for Lewis. He had become so close with Rodgers, Davante Adams , David Bakhtiari and Randall Cobb that he considers them brothers for life. But Adams was traded in 2022, Rodgers and Cobb also left in 2023, and Bakhtiari played only one more game for the Packers

"If they were all still there, maybe I'd feel differently," Lewis says. "But the fact that they're gone has made it smooth for me."

Lewis still considers Packers coach Matt LaFleur a good friend, however. The move to Illinois has separated but not divided them as they kid each other about their new rivalry.

"I always tell him it's not personal — it's just punishment," Lewis says.

Many have transitioned between the teams as Lewis has, which is a little like going from a pack of dogs to a clowder of cats.

Jim McMahon became one of the most popular Bears ever over the first seven years of his career. He spent the next seven years of his career on five teams before finishing in Green Bay as Brett Favre's backup.

When he was a Bear, the Packers showed a special disdain for McMahon, and the Bears' contempt for the Packers intensified after Packers defensive lineman Charles Martin cheap-shotted McMahon in 1987 and gave him a shoulder injury he never fully recovered from.

"It was hard to go there because of all the bad blood between the Bears and Packers during the '80s, but I'm glad I did," McMahon says. "The Packers were the best organization I played for out of the seven teams I was on. I'm not saying they were the best team I played for, but the Packers were the best overall organization."

McMahon became the only player to win a Super Bowl with both teams but remained a Bear at heart. When he went to the White House with the Packers to be honored by President Bill Clinton in 1997, he wore his Bears jersey under his sportcoat, saying he did it for his Bears teammates who didn't have the chance to go to the White House in 1986 after their Super Bowl win.

McMahon wasn't the only former Bear on the Packers' Super Bowl XXXI team. He was joined, reluctantly, by linebacker Ron Cox.

"I wanted to stay with the Bears, but the Packers offered me $1 million more," Cox says. "I had played against those guys for years, and they were always our archenemies. That first day, I'm looking at Brett Favre sitting across from me, a guy I'd been chasing my whole life. That was something that took me a long time to get used to because that rivalry was like the Hatfields and McCoys."

Cox felt out of place for another reason. He had been an outside linebacker for as long as he played football, and the Packers moved him inside. He wasn't comfortable playing inside, so in the offseason after winning the Super Bowl, he asked for his release. The Packers granted it, and despite a hard sell from Raiders coach Jon Gruden, Cox decided to return to the Bears.

"I said I'm going back home where I never should have left," Cox says.

Quarterback Zeke Bratkowski might have felt more ambivalence than anyone in the 103-year rivalry. After growing up in downstate Illinois, he played for the Bears for the first five years of his career. Then George Halas traded him to the Rams in 1961. Two years later, Vince Lombardi's Packers picked him up on waivers and Bratkowski became a valuable member of the Packers' dynasty as Bart Starr's backup, going 5-0 as a postseason starter. After he retired, Bratkowski became a Packers assistant coach. Then he became a Bears assistant but left Chicago to coach again in Green Bay.

"Playing for the Bears was tough," Bratkowski once said. "But nothing compared to the pride of being a Packer."

No one knows how to wound the Bears more than a Bear-turned-Packer. When defensive end Julius Peppers signed with Green Bay in 2014 after the Bears cut him because of his salary, he told Packers.com, "The teams that have the good quarterbacks are the teams that win. That obviously factored into some of my decision-making."

In Peppers' four seasons in Chicago, he played with Jay Cutler. Peppers' record with the Bears against Rodgers' Packers was 2-7, including a loss in the NFC Championship Game in 2011.

Bratkowski was one of many who coached for both teams. Others included Dick Jauron, Luke Getsy and Bob Slowik.

Gene Ronzani played six years for the Bears as a halfback in the 1930s, retired, then returned during World War II to replace Sid Luckman at quarterback when Luckman joined the Merchant Marine. He retired again after the 1945 season and became an assistant coach for the Bears for three years. Then Ronzani left in 1950 to succeed Curly Lambeau as head coach of the Packers.

Knowing how Halas did business, Ronzani was paranoid about being spied on. He didn't give his players playbooks because he feared they would end up on the other side of the state line. And during practices at Joannes Park, he told sidelined Packers to stand in front of splits in the fence and knotholes to prevent outsiders from having a view.

The irony is some Packers didn't trust Ronzani, given where he came from.

"Green Bay never got along with Gene Ronzani," Packers linebacker Deral Teteak said, according to the book "Mudbaths and Bloodbaths: The Inside Story of the Bears-Packers Rivalry." "They had other people in mind to be the coach other than an ex-Bear. If they wanted to hire someone, there were a lot of ex-Packers around."

As a Packer, Ronzani surrounded himself with former Bears, including assistant coach Ray "Scooter" McLean, who played for the Bears for seven years as a halfback and defensive back. McLean succeeded Ronzani as interim head coach in 1953 then returned to his role as an assistant for four years before becoming head coach in 1958. His 1-10-1 record that year with a roster that included eight future Hall of Famers prompted the hiring of Vince Lombardi.

Those Hall of Famers, including Starr, Paul Hornung and Forrest Gregg, were acquired by personnel man Jack Vainisi, who grew up near Wrigley Field — then the home of the Bears — and was a classmate of Halas' son, Mugs, who became president of the Bears.

Vainisi brought in his brother Jerry to work as a Packers ball boy. Jerry grew up to be the general manager who presided over the 1985 Bears. Another of the primary builders of the 1985 Bears was personnel man Bill Tobin. He came to the Bears in 1975 after Starr, at the time a new head coach, fired him after four seasons as a Packers scout.

In 1987, the Packers wanted to interview Tobin to be their vice president of football operations, but the Bears refused to give permission. The teams rarely have done favors for each other.

The biggest trade between them came in 1970 when the Bears gave up the second pick of the draft for linebacker Lee Roy Caffey, who played on three championship teams and was an All-Pro in 1966, Elijah Pitts, a backup halfback who had been a contributor to five championship teams, and guard Bob Hyland. All were gone from the Bears after one season (Pitts eventually returned to the Packers), and the Packers used the second pick on defensive tackle Mike McCoy, who played 11 years and twice led the team in sacks.

Acquiring a player from the other team has often been perceived as a coup. It was that way with Josh Sitton. After seven years, three Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl victory, the guard was stunned to be among the Packers' final cuts in September 2015. The Bears went after him hard.

"Chicago and New Orleans were the first to call, and because of Chicago's proximity to Green Bay, I figured it would be easier to do my visit in Chicago first," Sitton says. "I planned to visit New Orleans, too, and there were probably four or five other serious teams. So I went to Chicago the next day and was getting ready to get on a plane to New Orleans. I actually was on the phone with (then-Saints coach) Sean Payton when my agent beeped in, saying he got a deal done with the Bears."

That December, the Packers beat the Bears 30-27, but Sitton handled his business after coach Jon Fox appointed him a captain for the week.

"I was pretty juiced up and I kicked (defensive tackle) Mike Daniels' ass the whole game," he says. "But it was a blast getting to play the guys. As I was hitting guys, we were having little conversations."

Longtime Bears quarterback Bobby Douglass enjoyed playing in the late stages of a game against the Bears as a Packer in 1978.

"Seeing Doug Buffone, a good friend who lived not far from me, Doug Plank, Jim Osborne and Mike Hartenstine — that was fun," Douglass says. "We talked on the field between plays."

Others have been conflicted playing against former teammates. Cox says opposing his former Bears teammates as a Packer at Soldier Field was one of the most difficult things he ever had to do.

"It was hard to walk out of the tunnel from a different side and look at Dante Jones and Barry Minter — my roommates," he says. "You think about all the old days in training camp in Platteville. It's hard to fight your teammates like that."

In 1994, the Bears cut Steve McMichael rather than pay him $1 million even though he had played more games for them than any player in their history. He signed with the Packers for $400,000 and told the Chicago Tribune, "I can't wait to bust (Mike) Ditka's chops. Tell him I'm Forrest Gregg's big buddy now."

But McMichael wasn't so light-hearted when it came to playing against his former team.

"He almost had tears in his eyes out there before we played," Bears guard Mark Bortz said.

Emotion struck Sitton on the bus ride to Lambeau Field before his first game against the Packers with the Bears.

"The bus drove by the house I lived in and still owned on Rustic Way, right behind the Shell station," Sitton says. "It was all very weird."

. Somehow, he keeps coming back

Calling Green Bay home was different for Douglass, who had an apartment two blocks from Rush Street when he was single and frequented Chicago's nightclubs. He didn't want to leave the Bears and thought he would spend his whole career with them, but he was stunned when general manager Jim Finks cut him after a season-opening loss in 1975. After one season with the Chargers and two with the Saints, Douglass signed with the Packers.

Douglass was impressed with the Packers organization and thought Green Bay was a great place to play, but Douglass' wife and children remained in their Lake Forest home. During the week, Douglass lived in a hotel across the street from Lambeau Field. He walked to practices and games. After games, he drove to Lake Forest and spent a night or two with his family before driving back for the beginning of the practice week.

Before signing with the Bears this past offseason, safety Jonathan Owens enjoyed Green Bay partly because small-town living drew Packers players together.

"Either you were hanging out with teammates outside the facility, or everybody would be up at the facility," he says. "You would go there at 10 at night, and there was always somebody there because everything was closed. So we would all go get some food at the facility. In Chicago, there's so much to do."

Owens' only previous exposure to Chicago had been when he played in games as an opponent, and then he said he never went anywhere other than Soldier Field and his hotel.

"After I signed and drove into downtown, seeing the skyline and water and everything, it was so beautiful and backed up that I made the right decision," he says.

The decision was influenced by his wife, Simone Biles. The Olympic gymnast had the Bears on her wish list of teams for him to sign with.

"She loves Chicago," Owens says of Biles. "She's more interested in the city than anything. She wants to know that I'm happy, but she was like, this is one of the places she said she could go to."

Biles is recognized wherever she goes, but Owens says the couple enjoys more privacy in Chicago than in Green Bay. They have mixed with locals, eating at restaurants such as Divan and Wildberry Pancake and Cafe ("We're foodies," he says), shopping on Michigan Avenue and fishing on Lake Michigan.

Changing sides in this rivalry often affects a player beyond the time he spends with the former enemy. During Cox's one season in Green Bay, his son, Ron. Jr., was born at St. Mary's Hospital. A nurse there put a Packers hat on him when he was two minutes old.

"So now, he's a diehard Packers fan," says Cox, whose kids went to high school in suburban Chicago after the family settled back in Illinois. "There's no converting him."

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos of Jonathan Owens, Jim McMahon and Marcedes Lewis: Kara Durrette / ; Jonathan Daniel / Allsport; Christian Petersen / )