As a huge fan of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the first thing that came to mind after Sunday’s brutal outcome for the Packers was to play “The Sky Is Falling.” It’s a great track and the title fits exactly how I (and most of Packer Nation) was feeling in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s game. It felt like, in the matter of just a few plays, the Packers went from leading an 11-win team by nine points on the road and having all the momentum needed to make a real run at this thing, to losing a handful of their best players and the game to top it all off. Momentum is a fickle thing in this sport; one minute it’s your best friend and the next it’s your worst enemy. All the Packers can do now is regroup and refocus, one game at a time.

Thinking too far ahead and the “what ifs” that come with it will do this team no good. Since the moment that game ended on Sunday, all across the internet you see fans worrying about how they might match up with a team like the Rams or Seahawks come the playoffs. What the loss of Micah Parsons might mean if they miss out on the division title and have to try and make a run with four straight playoff wins on the road. Matt LaFleur and his group can’t be worried about who they might see in the playoffs or what the path to Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara looks like right now; their focus should be on nothing other than the next team on the schedule.

Next up for Green Bay is a Saturday night matchup with their arch-rival Chicago Bears for control of the NFC North. While the Packers are coming off that crushing (in more ways than one) loss, the Bears are coming off a stomping of the Cleveland Browns at the friendly confines of Soldier Field. While Saturday night will feel a whole lot different than a few weeks ago when the Bears came to Lambeau, they can still walk out a winner. You can bet they are going to try and establish the run from the first whistle and make Green Bay prove they can stop them. In their game against Cleveland, the Bears ran for 142 yards on 33 carries. Stopping that vaunted rushing attack should be Green Bay’s main priority.

If the game two weeks ago showed Green Bay anything, it’s that they need to stop the run and allow Caleb Williams to beat them. If they let Caleb Williams try and beat them, he’s shown that he can’t. When the game was on the line on that final 4th and 1, Ben Johnson let his quarterback try and make the game-winning play, and instead he tossed up a duck right into the waiting arms of Keisean Nixon. If the Bears had run the ball on that gassed Packers defense, we are likely having a different conversation. Green Bay is still sitting at eighth in the NFL in run defense, allowing just 100.5 rushing yards per game. They entered Week 15 against Denver with a league-best 9.6% missed tackle rate against running backs. Parsons was a large factor in that, but they did manage to finish a top unit in that same department last year without him. If they can make this Bears offense one-dimensional and take away the run, they’ll have a chance.

Offensively, Green Bay’s offense needs to control the time of possession in order to win this football game. Last game against the Bears, there were too many long possessions by Chicago that completely wore out the Packers defense to the point where they were visibly gassed at the end of the game. Without Parsons, this team just doesn’t have the horses necessary to be on the field for 14-, 15-, or 17-play drives like the Bears are going to want to do. They have the offense to help make this possible.

They’ve done a good job thus far. Green Bay is averaging 6.3 plays per drive this season, which is good for ninth in the NFL. Those 6.3 plays take up an average of 3:03 of game clock, which is seventh in the league. As the number one third-down offense in all of football, Matt LaFleur needs to build a game plan around ball control. As tantalizing as it is to throw deep to Watson or call long-developing passing plays for chunk yardage, the Packers need to get Josh Jacobs going and build off his great game last week against the Broncos, where he finally ripped off a big play with his 40-yard touchdown run and averaged six yards per carry. Jacobs needs to wear down the Bears on a cold night in Chicago so they can control the clock and keep their hurting defense on the sideline. Ball control and offensive efficiency is now the name of the game for this version of the Green Bay Packers.

The road to the playoffs got harder after Sunday, but not impossible. The Packers have two games coming up against teams they have already beaten this season, Chicago and Minnesota. Losing one of your top two best players makes it harder, but not impossible, to achieve. If this team can focus on just the next game and keep their focus on who’s across the line of scrimmage and not who’s down the potential schedule road, they have enough talent to achieve all their goals. Just take it one game at a time.