Wide receiver DJ Moore, who caught the Bears’ 46-yard game-winning touchdown pass in overtime against the rival Packers on Saturday night, has a theory about his team’s late-game successes: They’re getting help from above — and also behind them.
“It’s got a lot to do with Virginia looking over us,” he said, “and Ben being on our ass.”
The Bears are playing their first season without matriarch Virginia McCaskey, who died in February, and their first with hard-driving head coach Ben Johnson.
Saturday night’s 22-16 overtime win was the most manic victory in a season full of them. The Bears have won enough of these close games, though, that some of their players are beginning to wonder just how special this season can become.
After the Bears improved to 11-4 Saturday with their sixth comeback win in the final two minutes — the most since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger — it’s not a ridiculous notion.
“It feels like since I’ve been here the past five years, everything’s gone wrong,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “You’re bound to get at least one thing going right.”
Kmet joked that he’d like to see the probability of the Bears winning the game — one which they never led until the game-winner. Before Bears kicker Cairo Santos converted an onside kick with 1:59 to go, NFL Next Gen Stats gave the Bears a 0.5% chance of winning.
To steal the game, so much had to go right for the Bears:
• Santos had to make a 43-yard field goal in gusty conditions with 1:59 to play. It was his third field goal in as many tries on a night he called one of the trickiest at Soldier Field since a Christmas Eve 2022 game against the Bills where the game-time temperature was 9 degrees. At certain points, the goal posts were rocking back and forth.
“Phenomenal job,” coach Ben Johnson said. “I think that’s a big asset for us. He’s been here. He understands that wind.”
• Cornerback Josh Blackwell had to recover the onside kick when Romeo Doubs muffed Santos’ ball. It was the Bears’ first onside kick recovery of the season and the third of Santos’ 12-year career. NFL teams had recovered about 8% of onside kicks this season.
Johnson was wise to kick the ball short when other coaches would have considered kicking deep, burning two timeouts and trying to get the ball back with maybe 45 seconds to play.
He got lucky, too.
“We had an opportunity to field the ball,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said. “We just didn’t field the ball.”
• Quarterback Caleb Williams had to drive the Bears to a game-tying touchdown in the final 1:59. He found rookie Jahdae Walker, who’d played eight snaps all year before Saturday, open in the back right corner of the end zone on fourth-and-four from the 6 with 24 seconds to play.
Johnson considered going for two but thought he had a better-than-not chance of winning in overtime. The odds of making a two-point conversion were less than 50%, he said.
• The Bears had to stop the Packers on fourth-and-one in overtime. Quarterback Malik Willis scrambled for no gain on third-and-one before center Sean Rhyan’s snap went awry and bounced to the ground.
• And then the Bears had to win the game on Williams’ ridiculous play-action touchdown pass to Moore. The Bears installed it Thursday after coach and quarterback discussed it in Johnson’s office. Williams said the play “ended up working out just how we thought.”
Blackwell, Santos, Walker and Moore each got a game ball — Moore accepted his while wearing a foam cheese grater on his head.
There were other turning points in the game’s final minutes, too — Williams scrambling for a first down on fourth-and-one with four minutes to play; Packers defensive lineman Warren Brinson grabbing Williams’ facemask on third-and-20 four plays later to keep the Bears’ drive alive; and Kyle Monangai running for 11 yards on third-and-three in overtime to set up the play-action pass to Moore on the next play.
And Williams, whose teammates call the “Iceman,” had to flip a switch after underperforming for the first 58 minutes of regulation to give the Bears their first 10-point comeback against the Packers since 1960.
“You feel like you’re rubbing salt in the wound there — but that’s the reality of it,” LaFleur said when asked about the pain of the loss. “It should hurt because these guys, all of us, we put a lot into this thing. And we had opportunities. You’re up two scores late in the game. And, unfortunately, it flipped pretty quick.”
It all had to happen for the Bears to win.
“We’re going to keep working, we’re going to keep striving for wins, we’re going to deep striving for being the top team in this league,” said Williams, who ran a lap around the field after the game to high-five fans. “And we’re going to keep fighting until that clock says zero. From there, we’ll look up and see who wins.”
Maybe it’s destiny.
It sure felt like it Saturday night.
“That’s the cool part about destiny,” Williams said. “You have to get to the end to know.”
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