(670 The Score) Start with what matters most about the Bears’ scintillating 19-17 victory over the Vikings on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
The Bears beat an NFC North opponent in a hostile road environment during the middle of November to stay in first place in the division.
First place in the division.
Yes, the 7-3 Bears are in first place in their division after stunning the NFL world, again.
That makes the moment Cairo Santos' 48-yard field goal as time expired as significant as any postgame celebration in years because – let's face it, Chicago – how often lately have you spent Thanksgiving break talking to your family about the Bears' playoff possibilities?
It's time to alter those preseason expectations. It's been awhile since the Bears resembled the kind of resilient team nobody wants to play down the stretch and one in which everybody expects to find a way.
This is the kind of team that no longer asks if it will rally but how it will get it done, a group that now will feel disappointed if it doesn’t carry that confidence into the playoffs – as the Bears should.
It’s a team full of players who want to win for each other as much as they do for themselves.
"I had to make it right for the team,” Santos said, referencing his 45-yard missed attempt earlier in the fourth quarter.
This is the kind of rhetoric you hear regularly in the Bears locker room in head coach Ben Johnson's fascinating first season, a culture shift quicker than even the most optimistic could've imagined. This was the fifth fourth-quarter comeback for a Bears team that's now won seven of its last eight games after an 0-2 start. This was more evidence that Johnson has transformed the Bears from a team that once invented ways to lose into one that believes it will find a way to win, no matter what.
"The belief that we've grown in the locker room is what's changed,” quarterback Caleb Williams told reporters in Minneapolis. "That's been the biggest thing in this season so far, when you have belief and the trust in each other, these moments don't seem too big.”
The moment certainly looked daunting after shaky Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy hit Jordan Addison for a 15-yard touchdown pass with 50 seconds left to give the Vikings a 17-16 lead. Up to that point, the Bears defense had taken advantage of McCarthy's misfires, picking off two of his passes. But the Bears couldn't stop the streaky McCarthy on the Vikings’ late 10-play, 85-yard drive that finished with Addison's go-ahead touchdown.
On the Bears sideline, kick returner Devin Duvernay sensed two things before going deep for the return: confidence and an opportunity to make his biggest impact as a Bear.
"We didn't waver,” said Duvernay, signed as a free agent this past offseason. "The game isn't over till it's 0:00 on the clock.”
Such is life for the 2025 Bears, who are good for your Sundays but bad for your blood pressure.
Duvernay took the kick and exploded for a 56-yard return that put the ball at the Vikings' 40-yard line with 42 seconds left.
"We absolutely needed that,” Johnson said. "We've been waiting for one of those from him, to be honest with you.”
"We executed it almost perfectly,” Duvernay added.
Apparently, Johnson agreed because the usually aggressive coach went conservative on the next three plays he called: all runs. Johnson playing it safe in that situation to remove some of the suspense from Santos' attempt came as a surprise that would've been worthy of second-guessing had Santos missed.
It became a moot point when Santos nailed it.
"After the Vikings scored (with 50 seconds left), in my head, I'm just praying for an opportunity to make a game-winning kick,” Santos said. "That return felt like a prayer had been answered.”
Finally, the Bears special teams did something truly special.
Earlier, it was a special teams breakdown that swung momentum. The Bears held a commanding 16-3 lead early in the fourth quarter when Vikings electric return man Myles Price took Tory Taylor's punt 43 yards to the Bears' 24-yard line. Two plays later, the home crowd resumed chanting "Skol" and the home team was within 16-10 after Jordan Mason’s 16-yard touchdown run.
The Bears' response said everything about what Johnson wants his offense's identity to be. They ran the ball on six of the next seven snaps behind an offensive line that's become the strength of this team, moving the ball to the Vikings' 27-yard line. That's when Santos missed a 45-yarder that made the last-second drama all the more delicious.
"That's who he is,” Johnson said of Santos. "I've got a lot of confidence in him. He doesn't let one miss faze him.”
The same can be said about Williams, who has had better days but wasn't complaining about presiding over his fifth fourth-quarterback comeback of the season. The man teammates called "Iceman" had little to do with the final drive ending well but did protect the football on a day that Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores gave Williams all he could handle schematically. Williams finished a disappointing 16-of-32 for 193 yards and a 68.9 passer rating but again showed smarts and savvy that are hard to measure. What often gets lost in evaluating Williams is his ability to escape sacks and avoid bad plays, a big area of improvement from his rookie season.
Johnson came committed to establishing the run anyway, calling as many running plays as pass plays. D'Andre Swift carried the load with 21 carries for 90 yards, and Kyle Monangai provided a strong complement, running hard for 23 yards on 12 carries. It wasn't so much the yards gained that influenced the game as the rushing attempts that controlled time of possession, with the Bears having the ball 36 minutes, 59 seconds.
And when the Vikings did have the ball, McCarthy mostly struggled. Drops plagued the Vikings but not as much as McCarthy's inaccuracy, which resulted in Bears safety Kevin Byard's league-leading fifth interception.
The Bears' other takeaway capped an emotional week for cornerback Nahshon Wright, who made a terrific, athletic leap to intercept McCarthy in the end zone late in the second quarter and then took a knee and said prayer in tribute to the mentor he just lost.
Former Laney College football coach and current athletic director John Beam was shot and killed last week on the school's Oakland campus. Wright played in college for Beam, a beloved coach featured in the Netflix series "Last Chance U” and who supported Wright through the tragic shooting death of his father in 2017.
"He meant the world to me,” Wright told reporters at his locker. "Someone I loved dearly. I'm really at a loss for words.”
Wright epitomizes this Bears team as well as any player, a surprise emergence taking advantage of the opportunity he seized. Wright's chance came when All-Pro cornerback Jaylon Johnson missed the preseason and played in only one game before suffering a groin injury that required surgery after Week 2. It was considered a safe assumption that Johnson would miss the season, but the Bears raised eyebrows Friday in announcing Johnson's 21-day practice window had opened.
That means Johnson potentially could be available for Chicago’s game at Green Bay on Dec. 7.
By then, linebacker T.J. Edwards could return. And, who knows, maybe even nickelback Kyler Gordon. Success can have amazing healing powers.
The Bears have ascended to first place in the division without meaningful contributions from at least three defensive starters: Johnson, Edwards and Gordon.
All three could supplement a defense in a December that carries NFL relevance for a football city for the first time in years. Exactly 10 games into the Ben Johnson era, the Bears look like a legitimate, bona fide playoff team.
That's the fun, undeniable reality.
It doesn't really matter if you believe it either because, after another unlikely comeback Sunday in Minnesota, the Bears certainly do. And that belief is making all the difference.
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 X @DavidHaugh.