This was the 2009 season opener. Aaron Rodgers had successfully revived his team in the fourth quarter, after throwing a 50-yard touchdown pass to Greg Jennings with 1:11 remaining against the Bears. That night, the Packers walked away with a 21-15 victory in a game that would eventually become a part of their long-standing rivalry… but something was different about this one. Those were the days when guards were not mic-ed up, but the Bears had checks that were, as Rodgers would like to quote, and for lack of a better word, super-inappropriate.

Well, the Bears, who played under then-HC Lovie Smith, would routinely choose Cover-2 defenses against the Packers owing to how successful it was in taking away big downfield plays. So, changing calls wasn’t really a high-priority task. That being said, Smith would sometimes let Urlacher and Briggs not only check different calls but also name them; Only Urlacher here decided to do so, just for kicks.  

Back in the day, they couldn’t really come up with a watered-down version, probably because those checks were just that dirty. When probed further, Urlacher still couldn’t, not even for the sake of telling a good story: “I wish I could, but I can’t divulge the terminology we used for those weeks.” But fret not, because Urlacher, who was on the new episode of the ‘Glory Daze Podcast,’ did not hesitate this time as he did back in 2019. But first, excuse his language. 

“Aaron knew our checks. You know, you play a team enough times, you’re going to know their checks. So we had a ‘Pirate’ check. So, we changed it for that week. And this is going to be great for people listening, but it was ‘Big P–y’. 

“We changed it. So it was Pirate. We could say anything with a P on it. That would be our Pirate check. So they wouldn’t know our Pirate check. So, the tight end gets up and moves, and Lance [Briggs] goes, ‘Big Pu–y, Big Pu–y.’ And Aaron starts laughing before the ball gets snapped. He looked at me and started shaking his head, and started laughing. 

“But we had to change our stuff because they knew our defense so well. And you weren’t going to trick any of those guys pre-snap, but just the words, the buzzwords, we throw out there were always fun,” Urlacher added. The idea was to come up with phrases that would stand out to avoid confusion, but he also admitted in 2019 that “we kind of went a little overboard sometimes.” No wonder. 

And so, years after that game, when Rodgers and Urlacher met each other at the American Century celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe, the QB needed to understand the backstory out of curiosity. ‘Was any of that stuff real, or were you just effing around?’ We all now know the answer to that, and both had a good chuckle about it.

Although the Bears did everything they could do that day, the Packers were just better. They even ruined the Bears QB Jay Cutler’s debut as he recorded a career-worst four interceptions, and Urlacher suffered a wrist injury in the third quarter. But the game still makes for a great story, doesn’t it?