Bear Digest

Bears become destiny's darlings in miracle comeback win over Packers

From DJ Moore's TD catch, to Jahdae Walker's tying TD, to an unlikely onside kick recovery, the Bears had all the right plays break in 22-16 overtime win.
Gene Chamberlain|
DJ Moore brings down the 46-yard TD pass from Caleb Williams with Keisean Nixon draped on his back, delivering a Bears win.
DJ Moore brings down the 46-yard TD pass from Caleb Williams with Keisean Nixon draped on his back, delivering a Bears win. | David Banks-Imagn Images

In this story:

Chicago Bears

Team of destiny?

Caleb Williams didn't want to go there quite yet.

"That's the cool part about destiny," Williams said. "You've got to get to the end to know."

The Bears are nowhere near their end but they'll have a difficult time writing another chapter to this miraculous season that is similar to Saturday night's 22-16 overtime win over the Green Bay Packers.

Williams ended it by lofting a 46-yard bomb to DJ Moore, who caught it over his shoulder in the end zone with Packers cornerback Keisean Nixon perched on his back. Moore held on, the Packers had blown a 10-point lead in the final five minutes of regulation, and the wild celebration began.

"Everybody ran on the field, the stadium went live and blew up," Williams said. "And so I'm happy for our guys, I'm happy for Chicago, I'm happy for this moment. And I'm very grateful for it.

"But we've got some other good games coming up. So we'll enjoy it and move on."

Williams, who went 19 of 34 for 250 yards, took a bow for the fans by running all the way around the stadium and acknowledging their noisy impact on the game.

"I knew it was good," Williams said after completing the pass for his sixth fourth-quarter comeback this season. "You've got that belief, you've got that confidence, you've got that swagger as an offense.

"You hit plays like that in practice. It was pretty identical to practice. When the play gets called and the moment, the moment comes up like that it's time to hit it. It's time to go win the game."

Moore had connected with Williams on the play in practice Thursday but this was a game and the ball hung in the air a long time.

"Scary," Moore said of his feelings as he tried to track it down. "But I could track the ball and know if I've got to slow down or speed up to get to where my hand placement is. It was scary but it was cool."

They only had to start the comeback off by rushing down for a 43-yard field goal by Cairo Santos in tricky wind conditions, then recover an onside kick to make it all possible.

Of course it would be Josh Blackwell recovering it with just under two minutes remaining. He always seems to be there when a big special teams play is needed, like with the blocked field goal against the Raiders.

Wide receiver Romeo Doubs couldn't handle the onside kick.

"It kind of went through his arms and I was in the right place, right time," Blackwell said.

Then the Bears were right back where they had been two weeks earlier against the Packers, needing a TD and a conversion to tie or two-point conversion to win.

Williams quickly took them in 1:35 to the end zone but with the wildest of targets for his fourth-and-6, game-tying TD pass. It was none other than Jahdae Walker, the preseason hero whose celebrations electrified fans. He finally got a chance to chase passes with Rome Odunze and Luther Burden III out injured and delivered.

Walker got wide open in the right corner and Williams threw a bit high but the undrafted rookie got his feet down.

"I know to the people who haven't been in the building, they're saying, 'Oh my gosh you're going to the undrafted rookie on fourth down!’ " coach Ben Johnson said. "We see what he does every single week. We see how he goes about his business.

"There's a reason why we didn't want to expose him to the waiver wire and someone poach him after the preseason. We see a bright future for this guy and he's done nothing but steadily improve over the course of the season."

Walker caught it but the big decision was yet to come with 24 seconds remaining. Would Johnson go for two, as he always seems to want to do?

He opted to kick and play for for overtime.

"Two-point conversion rate is under 50% and I felt like we had an above 50% chance to win it in overtime," Johnson explained.

They did win it then because the defense did in overtime what they had done all night, whether it was when Jordan Love was Packers QB before Austin Booker's hit sent him to the concussion protocol in the second quarter, or when Malik Willis replaced him. They gave up yards, but by and large held down the points or took the ball away.

This time it was a fourth-and-1 gamble by Packers coach Matt LaFleur at the Bears' 36 that blew up.

Instead of risking a long field-goal try on the first possession, he had Wilson take the snap but he never actually got it. The ball wound up on the ground on the snap, and the Packers recovered for a 3-yard loss. So the Bears took over, and four plays later they had Moore laying in the end zone with the ball and an 11-4 record, 1 1/2 games ahead of the Packers.

"We're never out of it. We never felt like we were out of the game," Blackwell said.

They searched for a way to explain it all of these wild comebacks and late victories. Moore went toward the supernatural to explain a win that seemed like the miracle comeback against the Bengals on steroids.

"I don't know. It's amazing, right?" Moore said, then gave credit to the late Virginia McCaskey somewhere out there pulling the strings.

"We got Virginia, we got her on our side," Moore said. "And we got this season on our side. We got Ben on our side. It's really Virginia and Ben, so really kudos to them.

"We're going out there and playing our butts off."

It sounds like the thing team of destiny do.

X: BearsOnSI

Published
Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.