CHICAGO (670 The Score) – At long last, Caleb Williams had done it.
With three straight completions on the final drive Sunday at Soldier Field, the Bears rookie quarterback did essentially what he was drafted to do: put his team in position to beat the Packers. The dreaded, awful, trash-talking, cheese-loving, make-them-green-with-envy Packers.
That's where everything starts at Halas Hall, mind you. Ask any McCaskey. Ask any Grabowski. Ask Lovie Smith, who famously declared on his first day back in 2004 that nothing mattered as much as beating the Packers, and then he backed it up by going 7-3 against them in his first five years. Bears general manager Ryan Poles paraphrased the same passion when taking over in 2022 and vowing to take the (NFC) North.
Just beat the Packers, and worry about the rest later.
So now here was Williams, with less than three minutes left and trailing by a point, embracing a chance to etch his name even deeper in a football city's consciousness in a way only success against the Packers can. On third and fourth downs, after two straight sacks, Williams forged ahead and found fellow rookie Rome Odunze for two clutch completions. Then he hit Keenan Allen for 12 yards to cross into field-goal range. Welcome to the rivalry, kid.
Forget about Williams' recent disappointing three-game stretch and the deafening national screamfest about what that portends for his career. Forget about all that noise that Williams never expected to hear this season. Thanks to Williams, the Bears now were a makeable 46-yard field goal away from No. 18 becoming the guy whose presence gives them hope to achieve the franchise's No. 1 goal.
Williams was on the verge of staking his claim against the Packers in the dramatic way his childhood idol, Aaron Rodgers, too often owned the Bears, ready to make so much of what happened in the first half of the season moot.
A legacy moment awaited. Rare opportunity arrived.
Then reality rudely intervened.
These are the Bears. And this is the rivalry.
So maybe it shouldn't have come as such a surprise at all when Packers lineman Karl Brooks exploded through a weak spot on the Bears’ interior and blocked Cairo Santos' kick to secure a 20-19 win for Green Bay.
Maybe we should’ve expected something bad to happen all along, yet we still were left picking our jaws up off the floor as the Packers celebrated on the field their 11th straight victory over the Bears, dating back to 2018.
Perhaps the Bears' most reliable operation -- Santos kicking a field goal – failed. Because of course it did.
Can a feeling so familiar qualify as shock? The Bears seem to not just lose games, they get defeated in a way that’s emotionally demoralizing and debilitating, suffering the kind of catastrophic punch-in-the-gut, knife-through-the-heart losses that have become a modern-day tradition. This was another one of those painful moments, suspending belief and triggering all kinds of questions that never should've been necessary.
Why did Matt Eberflus decide to kick from that far away when the Bears easily could've run another play to get a few yards closer and still stop the clock? Hasn't this franchise learned from the lessons of previously overwhelmed head coaches like Marc Trestman and Matt Nagy that kicking field goals on second down is a bad idea? How does a breakdown like that happen on the game's most important play?
Let's start with why the Bears chose to increase the degree of difficulty by choosing to let the clock tick down to three seconds rather than gain a few more yards. Postgame, even Packers players told reporters they expected the Bears to try to get closer – especially because they noticed Santos' low trajectory on longer kicks. Memories of a 43-yarder blocked by the Jaguars in London perhaps should've been enough reason for the Bears to hand off one more time. They had the time but squandered it.
As a result, the Packers were more prepared for that moment than the Bears given how special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia foreshadowed the play. Bisaccia told the Packers, "I will not understand if we come out of this game without a block,” according to Green Bay head coach Matt LaFleur.
It was as if Bisaccia spoke it into existence and left the Bears muttering to themselves.
"They were loading the box there,” Eberflus said of the Packers’ defense ahead of the field-goal attempt. "I felt very confident where we were.”
There's really nothing Eberflus can feel confident about now, more than midway into what increasingly looks like his final season with the Bears.
The best head coaches remove as much doubt as possible. They inspire confidence rooted in credibility.
Consider this was the second game in the past four weeks that the Bears lost on the final play due to debatable judgment by their head coach – the Fail Mary defensive plan and now the Blocked Field Goal That Didn't Need to Be So Long. Nobody needs to delve much into other aspects of Eberflus in his third year to see why that trend is so troubling. Rebuilding teams can accept moral victories, but teams that began the season considered playoff contenders, as the Bears were, can’t tolerate these kinds of misjudgments that directly lead to losses. Not from a coach still searching for evidence of progress.
LaFleur, for example, can get away with making similarly scrutinized decisions because he has earned the benefit of the doubt. And LaFleur certainly took advantage of that status when he decided to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the 6-yard line early in the fourth quarter with the Packers trailing 19-14 when a field goal made more sense. The Bears stopped quarterback Jordan Love trying to scramble into the end zone and took over at their own 2-yard line. It was an illogical and indefensible decision, but LaFleur tried.
"Possessions were at a premium,'' LaFleur explained.
"There weren't a lot of possessions. I didn't know when we were going to get the ball back.''
When the Packers did get it back seven minutes later, they still had enough time for Love to find Christian Watson for a 60-yard completion that was the game's biggest play – setting up Love's one-yard touchdown run two plays later. Cornerback Jaylon Johnson simply fell covering Watson on the crossing route and lingered on the field as the last Bears player in the locker room. The weight of losing keeps getting heavier.
"It's almost comical,'' Johnson said of the way the Bears' last-play-of-the-game breakdowns. "The luck of the damn draw at this point. We've got to figure it out, how to be better.”
Offensively, the Bears appeared to figure more out under new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, but nobody should raise a beer mug over a 19-point output. Brown didn't try anything outlandish to prove he deserved the job and maintained a healthy run-pass balance. He moved the pocket on rollouts and made a concerted effort to target playmakers, especially top receiver DJ Moore.
The biggest strides came from Williams, who completed 23 of 31 passes for 231 yards without a touchdown or interception while being sacked three times. Williams also showed athleticism in gaining 70 yards on nine carries. The lasting impression came from 16- and 21-yard completions to Odunze on the final drive that nearly was epic.
"That's real quarterbacking at a high level,” Eberflus said.
With only seven games left and the Bears a disappointing 4-6, helping Williams ascend even higher becomes the team’s most significant responsibility. Sunday stalled his regression, but the challenges on a killer schedule will keep coming. And Williams – true to his personal mantra – will "keep going.''
A check-up phone call this week from Lincoln Riley, his coach at Oklahoma and USC, reminded him of the conversation the two shared one day during Williams' first year in Norman, Okla.
"It was something he told me my freshman year when I wasn't in the position I wanted to be in, which I wasn't starting at the time, and he told me to keep going and I certainly didn't know what those two words meant,” Williams said. "I use those words to this day. That's all you can do. That's all we can do.”
Indeed, Williams did all he could do in what could’ve been the defining game of his season.
Instead, the Bears found another way to lose – which largely has defined Eberflus' tenure.
That might be more acceptable or excusable in Chicago if he could beat the Packers but, under Eberflus, the Bears remain 0-for-forever.
And so it isn't.
David Haugh is the co-host of the Mully & Haugh Show from 5-10 a.m. weekdays on 670 The Score. Click here to listen. Follow him on Twitter @DavidHaugh.
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