Closing Time Was Losing Time for Bengals in 2025, but Defense Authors Emphatic Ending to Joint Practice with Bears

Thursday’s joint practice between the Cincinnati Bengals and Chicago Bears finished, fittingly, with a finish.

With the Bears starting offense trying to put together a two-minute drive against the Bengals starting defense, it was a colossal mismatch.

And one that was the complete opposite of what happened when Chicago visited Paycor Stadium last season.

Caleb Williams’ game-winning 58-yard touchdown pass to Colston Loveland with 17 seconds remaining was the encapsulation of an entire season’s worth of defensive futility, especially late in games.

Thursday, Williams went to Loveland again on the final drive of practice, and this time the Bengals deflected the pass for a Jalen Davis interception to seal an impressive day for Al Golden’s revamped group.

“That was a big emphasis in camp,” said defensive end Myles Murphy, who recorded back-to-back sacks – the second of which would have been a safety – on the two plays prior to Davis’ interception.

Murphy said head coach Zac Taylor listed every game where the team failed to finish and lost by one score and displayed them on the whiteboard in the team meeting room.

“Everything has been about finish the drive, finish the drill,” Murphy said. “We’ve got guys that can create pressure, whether it be pushing the pocket, burning the edges, crushing the pocket, however. I feel like we can take it as far as we want it to go.”

The final drive was part of a multi-series period in which both teams gathered on one field, rather than the Bears offense facing the Bengals defense on one field and the Bengals offense taking on the Bears defense on the other.

So as fired up as the defensive was to finish sack, sack, interception, the Cincinnati offense got to sit back and watch it.

And what that group saw was something completely different from 2025, and something strikingly familiar through the first three weeks of camp.

"They look like how they've looked all training camp," Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said. "I'm excited to go and watch that tape. We'll watch that. They look great in the small part that I saw."

“To win the game, that was amazing to see,” wide receiver Tee Higgins added.

It wasn’t just the final stop that had the locker room buzzing.

Prior to the Bears’ trying to win the game with a two-minute drill, Williams and Co. had a series of trying to kill the clock in a four-minute drill.

That also ended in an interception, with the ball in the unlikely hands of Dexter Lawrence, who batted Williams’ screen pass and plucked it out of the air.

Heard ya wanted to see this. pic.twitter.com/wvbDn5Q4Pu
— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) August 20, 2026

Lawrence disappointed his teammates by not rumbling the other way to try to score and instead just falling to the group with the ball.

“That’s on me,” he said. “I didn’t understand the situation. But we won it. That’s all that matters.”

If that was a real game and not a situational drill in practice, would Lawrence have scored?

“Yeah. I’m getting my stiff arm off,” he laughed.

It wasn’t just that the Cincinnati defense came up with two big turnovers late in a physically demanding practice when everyone was gassed. And it wasn’t just that they did it against the team that handed them their biggest embarrassment in season rife with them.

It was that it came against a really good offense in the Bears, and one that was among the best in the league at closing games in 2025.

Chicago set an NFL record with seven comeback wins last year, many of which were authored in the closing minutes, including a playoff win against the Packers.

“That’s one of the best offenses in the league,” Bengals cornerback DJ Turner II said. “It was good to see them. It was good to see everything that we had going on today.

“It’s definitely good to finish fast, but we’ve still got to start off better,” he added. “In the middle they got into a little flow, so we’ve got to polish that up a little bit. But the end? I loved it. I absolutely loved it.”

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