The Bears Live For The Fourth Quarter

Comebacks are just what Caleb Williams does. The second-year quarterback drilled DJ Moore with a 25-yard touchdown pass with 1:43 left as his Chicago Bears beat the visiting Green Bay Packers, 31-27, in an unbelievably believable thriller of a wild-card playoff game Saturday night. The Williams-to-Moore hookup capped off the Bears' seventh fourth-quarter comeback win of the season.

Chicago hadn’t won a playoff game since 2011. That sorry skein seemed secure after the first half at Soldier Field, with the Green Bay Packers up 21-3 and moving the ball at will, and the Bears flailing and failing, never more obviously than their 1-for-4 fourth-down conversion rate over the first two quarters.

In the first half, the field just seemed bigger when the Packers had the ball. Green Bay's receivers were almost always wide open, and when they weren’t, quarterback Jordan Love had plenty of green space around him to scramble until they were. The first three Packers drives of the game ended in touchdowns. The only blemish of the first half for the visitors came with Brandon McManus’s miss on a 55-yard field goal attempt on the last play before halftime.

Yet only an idiot, or somebody who didn’t follow Chicago this season, could think the game was over at the break. Comeback Caleb had the Packers just where he wanted 'em.  

At the racetrack, some horses are just closers, content to stay off the lead until it’s time to unleash a thrilling stretch run. Williams's portfolio is already full of such finishes. His coming out as a can't-miss kid came in 2018 as a sophomore for Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., when he went viral for throwing a 53-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass that won the city Catholic league championship. (Yeah, I was at the game. I haven't stopped talking about it since.) Williams further affirmed his closer bona fides when he replaced struggling Heisman hopeful Spencer Rattler at Oklahoma quarterback in the second quarter of the 2021 Red River Shootout. The Sooners were down 35-17 to Texas; the game ended with Williams’s team on top, 55-48. Of course it did.

And when his team needed superheroics in the fourth quarter last night, Williams had on his cape yet again. The Bears outscored the Packers 25-6 in the last quarter. Fourth-down woes? What fourth-down woes? On a fourth-and-8 play, down 27-16 with just about six minutes left on the clock, Williams avoided a blitzing, diving Isaiah McDuffie and made a 27-yard circus throw to recently rehabbed receiver Rome Odunze, who had been out with a stress-fractured foot since November, to keep hope alive.

Soon after came Williams's eight-yard touchdown toss to Olamide Zaccheaus, plus a two-point conversion pass to tight end Colston Loveland to bring the Bears within a field goal and set up the game-winner. Both of Williams’s TD passes came in the game's final 4:18. His last pass of the night was beautiful, practically sticking in Moore’s chest as the Bears wideout streaked down the sideline into the end zone.

After Moore’s go-ahead score, the Packers drove down to the Bears 28-yard line. But God doesn't answer everybody's Hail Marys. Love's desperation pass as the game clock expired fell incomplete in the end zone.

First-year Bears head coach Ben Johnson might argue his team's fetish for late-game feats comes as much from nurture as nature. During his post-game press conference, Johnson said that in preseason training camp, he had shown film from Super Bowl 51, where New England was down 28-3 to Atlanta but still ended up with a Lombardi Trophy. Two current Bears played in that title game: former Patriots guard Joe Thuney, and defensive tackle Grady Jarrett, previously on the Falcons. And Johnson linked that screening of the most famous comeback in NFL history to last night, which is now the largest playoff comeback in Bears franchise history.

"That was my message to the group," Johnson said. "Just reminding them that that this has been done before, and rather than saying, 'Woe is me' and 'Oh crap, we’re in a hole,' it’s more this is a great opportunity for us to turn this thing around, into a game that we'll never forget, and that’s what they did."

The Packers, meanwhile, are 1-5 in their last six playoff games under head coach Matt LaFleur. At his introductory press conference upon taking the top job at Chicago, Johnson, formerly the Detroit Lions offensive coordinator, said he wanted to stay in the NFC North because “I kinda enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.” Johnson did so again this season if you count the Bears' 22-16 walk-off overtime win over Green Bay a few weeks ago. On a likely related note, the two coaches had a very brief and very chilly summit on the field after Saturday's game. And later in the locker room, Johnson riled up his team with more intra-division hate: "Fuck the Packers, man! Fuck them! Fucking hate those guys!"