Luther Burden picked the perfect time Sunday to make his biggest impact in a month.
On the last play before the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, the Bears’ second-round rookie ran a fade stop route against Giants cornerback Korie Black, plucking Caleb Williams’ pass from the air at the Giants’ 28 and pushing two defenders nine yards for a gain of 27.
“It was a pretty easy deep stopper,” Burden said. “Get him going, stop on a dime, get a good completion.”
In the three weeks leading up to Sunday’s 24-20 win against the Giants, Burden had caught three passes for 21 yards, suffering a concussion against the Ravens that kept him out of the Bengals game.
Sunday, he caught three passes for 51 yards.
“You’ve slowly seen his rep count go up,” coach Ben Johnson said Monday. “He’s a guy who is starting to get more targets. It’s a trust level between the coaches and the player. It’s a trust level between the quarterback and a receiver. It continues to ascend.
“He has been very productive when he’s about to get the ball in his hands. And there’s a strong argument that we should get it to him more.”
Williams knew before the snap Burden had man coverage against him.
“As ‘Lu’ has said, when he gets the ball in his hands and he’s one-on-one, he’s pretty dangerous,” Williams said. “I had full belief. It’s something that we’ve been throwing for — I think we’ve had it up for about three weeks now. So I just felt confident in that moment — and I felt confident in him.”
Drops
How weird was it that the Bears dropped five passes, according to Pro Football Focus’ calculations, on Sunday? They had 10 all season before the Giants game.
PFF dinged receiver Olamide Zaccheaus for two drops and DJ Moore for one. Running backs D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai had one each.
Johnson planned to address the drops this week — but only to a point.
“You learn from it, you move on,” he said. “In my experience—and I’ve coached quarterbacks, I’ve coached receivers, I’ve coached tight ends on the offensive side — you can make things worse by going overboard on some of this stuff. And that’s not the intent.
“All those guys, they want to catch the football when it comes their way. We acknowledge the fact that there were a few of those that we could have hauled in. We need to do that, turn the page, let’s keep it moving. We’re going to be just fine.”
Shovin’
Left tackle Theo Benedet smiled when asked whether he should have gotten partial credit for Monangai’s eight-yard touchdown Sunday. He was one of the Bears’ offensive linemen to shove him the final three yards after Monangai had reached a stalemate.
“That’s one of the fun ones, as an offensive lineman, to knock one in like that,” he said.
Johnson enjoyed it, too.
“When you hit pause, you have all of these blue jerseys in the same frame, and we’re all pushing in the same direction,” he said. “That, to me, is inspiring football.”
Notes
• Johnson was frustrated most by how well Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart performed on planned quarterback runs Sunday. He ran six times for 66 yards.
“We felt like we could fit up those quarterback-designed runs a little bit better and cleaner on our end,” he said.
• Safety Jaquan Brisker is fine after going down with a back injury late in the second quarter, Johnson said. He returned to finish the game.
• Williams met up with his sixth-grade teacher at Soldier Field after the game.
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