The NFC North keeps finding new ways to sound like a neighborhood fight, and Colston Loveland says the Bears have landed right in the middle of it.
The Chicago tight end, speaking last week on Bussin’ With The Boys, drew a straight line between the rivalry he lived through at Michigan and the one he’s already feeling in the Bears’ building.
“As far as like, in the building, ‘What are you doing to beat Ohio State every day?’ That was where [the rivalry] was in Michigan.
Every TV, everything. That’s how it is at the Bears,” Loveland said.
“Everyone’s only talking about the Packers. You can’t go a day without talking about them, talking about beating them, talking about the bad things.
So, it’s very comparable [to Michigan].”
Across the division, Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie sounded just as convinced his team has the right ingredients for a championship run. His message was simple: the roster is there, but the job isn’t done until the game is over.
“I think we’ve got everything we need,” McDuffie said on NFL Network. “At the end of the day, it’s just finishing. Getting late in the season, just finishing those games when we are up on guys, just putting the nail in the coffin.”
In Minnesota, Kevin O’Connell is still working through the finer points of his quarterback setup. The Vikings coach said the room is a unique space, and he wants the communication there to keep sharpening.
“I think the quarterback room is such a unique place where those guys put so much time in meeting time, the official meeting time is a lot, as much as we can have them,” O’Connell said. “But it’s those organic times where they’re in the room, whether they’re getting ahead on the game plan or studying different aspects of the game, third down, red zone, two-minute, whatever it might be.”
O’Connell also stressed how central that group is to the rest of the team.
“I tell our guys all the time that quarterback rooms got to be the hub of so much communication to our team, both from an X’s and O’s standpoint in the huddle, how we run our offense,” O’Connell added. “But also all three of those guys have really unique traits to be great teammates and part of the leadership that helps our team try to chase whatever our ceiling might be for this season, and I’m excited about that.”
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