This will be just the second early afternoon game at Lambeau between these two teams in the last 16 games.
When the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears meet to wrap up their 2024 regular seasons on Sunday afternoon, they will do something that the teams have done only once in the last 15 seasons. It has become a bit of a running joke between some fans in the Packers-Bears rivalry that the teams’ games at Lambeau Field are (almost) always in prime time, but this week will be a rare bucking of that trend.
Indeed, Sunday’s game will be only the second time since 2008 that the Packers will play the Bears at Lambeau Field with a kickoff time of 12 Noon Central Time. The only other game since then that kicked off at that time was in 2019, when the teams played in week 15. Otherwise, it has been entirely late afternoon or night games dating back to Aaron Rodgers’ first season as a starter: 12 of the last 16 games have come in prime time, with two in the 3:00 time slot and this week’s being just the second at noon.
With this game getting the early afternoon treatment, it will be up against seven other games at the same time, four on each network. That means that Sunday’s game — which will be shown on FOX — will be a more regional broadcast than usual for this game, with the footprint covering primarily the upper Midwest and the plains area.
Here’s the broadcast map from 506sports.com, with Packers-Bears shown in green:
506sports.com
FOX has assigned one of its mid-tier broadcast pairings to this game, as Packers and Bears fans will hear Kevin Kugler and Daryl Johnston on the call. This will be the third Green Bay game that this team has called this season, having also been on the mic for the week three contest against the Tennessee Titans and the week six contest against the Arizona Cardinals.
The Packers won both of those two games comfortably, defeating the Titans 30-14 and the Cardinals 34-13. Hopefully Kugler and Johnston being on the call will mean good things for Green Bay again this Sunday afternoon.
As always, if you are outside of the green zone in the map above, your best bet is to watch the game on NFL Sunday Ticket. With one week left in the season, that service is now running an end-of-season promotion that gives fans full access for just $4.99 for week 18.