Among the many wild things that happened late in Chicago’s loss to Washington last Sunday, one of them was the Bears calling a handoff to backup center Doug Kramer Jr. on third-and-goal at the 1-yard line.
The handoff from quarterback Caleb Williams to Kramer was, of course, botched and fumbled. Washington recovered the loose ball to end that scoring threat.
In the aftermath of the loss, head coach Matt Eberflus said it was a 1-yard play, noting it was part of the game plan. In his own weekly news conference, Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron defended the play call.
“Reflecting on it, I think every play call that doesn’t work out, you go back and look at it and see, was it the best call in that situation? And I think I’ll always look inwardly first,” Waldron said. “And every play-call that doesn’t work out, obviously, you’re going to have a sense of, what could I have done better as a play-caller? What situations could I have put those guys in?
“But also, going back to the play, I have all the confidence in the world in all of our players. And I think something we’ve repped and worked on came up in the moment as a third-and-1 call there. It didn’t work out. But what I was most proud about was seeing our defense then get a three-and-out, our offense comes over to the sideline, everyone’s eyes are up, everyone’s communicating, ready to attack the next drive — and have a chance to score on the next drive as well.”
Waldron noted that while there is a balance between risk and reward — particularly with plays near the goal — he’s looking inward so that the team can have better results in the future.
“I think there’s always valid criticism when things don’t work out,” Waldron said.
But would he call that same play again?
“In that moment? Yeah, I was confident. I had trust in it,” Waldron said. “Looking back at it, all the things that go into any call throughout the course of the game — whether it’s early calls in the game that go to stuff not working out, calls in the middle, calls in the end, critical calls — always assess those and go forward.”
The Bears suffered a stunning loss to the Commanders last Sunday and the aftermath of Jayden Daniels’ game-winning Hail Mary featured plenty of finger pointing about how the game got away from them.
Head coach Matt Eberflus was criticized for giving the ball to offensive lineman Doug Kramer on the 1-yard-line because Kramer, who had never carried the ball before, fumbled the ball away. After taking a late lead, the Bears played soft defense to give up 13 yards to the Commanders and Daniels hit on the Hail Mary throw to Noah Brown because cornerback Tyrique Stevenson was in the wrong place after missing the start of the play jawing with fans. That led to more internal griping and an apology from Stevenson to the team on Monday.
On Wednesday, the message was that it is time to move on. Linebacker Tremaine Edmunds said if you “dwell on the past, you’re gonna trip going forward” and cornerback Jaylon Johnson said any thoughts about last week have to be focused on getting better in the future.
“We’re just trying to find ways to move forward and make sure everybody’s mind is in the right spot to win games,” Johnson said, via Mark Potash of the Chicago Sun-Times. “The biggest thing is learning from it, then not letting it linger.”
The test of the Bears’ ability to turn the page and get back on track will come in Arizona this Sunday. They have not won on the road yet this season and this would be an ideal time to change that record.
Bears defensive end Montez Sweat’s status will be something to watch heading into Sunday’s game against the Cardinals.
Sweat hurt his shin during last Sunday’s loss to the Commanders and the team listed him as a non-participant in practice on Wednesday. That listing was an estimation because the Bears only held a walkthrough.
Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said at his press conference that the team is hopeful Sweat will be on hand to chase down Kyler Murray, but there should be a better idea about his availability later this week.
Tackle Kiran Amegadjie (calf), safety Jaquan Brisker (concussion), cornerback Kyler Gordon (hamstring), and tackle Braxton Jones (knee) were also listed as out of practice. Offensive linemen Ryan Bates (shoulder) and Teven Jenkins (knee) were listed as limited.
Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels used his mobility to buy nearly 13 seconds to set up and throw the pass that became the Hail Mary that lifted Washington over Chicago on Sunday. Aiding him in that effort were two instances of uncalled holding.
Simms and I talked about it on Monday’s PFT Live. Both non-calls boosted the effort by Daniels to serve up a ball that had a chance to be batted and caught.
It doesn’t change the outcome. Plenty of missed calls happen in football. The Rams cemented their win over the Vikings to start Week 8 with an uncalled face mask. There’s no protest to be filed over it, no matter how blatant the missed call might have been.
Still, the officials did indeed fail to call at least two noticeable instances of holding on the Commanders’ Hail Mary. Whether they didn’t see the holding or they didn’t think it would matter because the Hail Mary is the ultimate camel-through-the-eye-of-the-neeedle play, they didn’t drop a flag.
And, yes, Hail Mary plays routinely entail pushing and shoving that otherwise would be regarded as pass interference. For years, however, the league has deliberately allowed a looser standard in those settings —as evidenced by the difficulty from five years ago in making pass interference calls and non-calls subject to replay review while carving out Hail Mary plays from the frame-by-frame search for contact.
Regardless, when pass interference is blatant on a Hail Mary, it gets called. (Or, as in the case of the Fail Mary, it immediately ends a lockout of the regular game officials.)
The holding that happened prior to the NFL’s latest successful Hail Mary was fairly blatant. And it wasn’t called. It’s OK for Commanders fans to admit it; they’re not going to take the win away.
The broader point is that, no matter what the NFL does to enhance officiating, there’s still enough incompetence lurking in the execution of the job to make people suspicious that something else might be going on.
Even if it’s not.
The Bears placed offensive lineman Bill Murray on injured reserve Tuesday, the team announced.
Murray injured a pectoral muscle while playing two offensive snaps and one on special teams Sunday.
He will miss four games before becoming eligible to return.
Murray has played three games this season.
The Bears also announced the signing of offensive lineman Austen Pleasants to the practice squad. They cut long snapper Jake McQuaide from the practice squad.
Regular long snapper Scott Daly now is healthy, leading to McQuaide’s release.
When you get beaten by a Hail Mary on a play that featured one of your defensive backs jawing with the crowd rather than covering the guy who eventually caught the touchdown, it makes sense that most of the focus is on what went wrong at the end of the game.
Bears tight end Cole Kmet took a little bit of a longer view of what helped lead to Sunday’s 18-15 loss to the Commanders. Kmet referenced cornerback Tyrique Stevenson’s lapse in judgment by saying you always need to play until the clock strikes zero and he said it was also a reminder of the work that has to be put in all week.
“I think it’s a really good lesson for everybody to learn from in terms of how to respect the game,” Kmet said in a videoconference on Monday. “I think we had examples of that throughout the game and, quite frankly, throughout the week of practice this past week. There’s moments where maybe some guys lay off here and there and those are the types of things that can happen when you do that for just a split-second. It doesn’t always come to bite you in the butt, but, when it does, it hurts. That’s the unfortunate and, I would also say, beauty of this game, if you disrespect it in a certain way and it’ll come to haunt you in some form or fashion. I think it’s a learning experience for everybody.”
Kmet said his comments were “more of a general thing” than a specific critique of anything that went on last week, but reiterated his view that “if you relentlessly respect the game, you’ll get the results that you want.”
Bears cornerback Tyrique Stevenson posted an apology to social media on Sunday regarding his actions on the final play of the team’s 18-15 loss to the Commanders and he made an in-person apology on Monday.
Stevenson apologized to the team for turning his back to the final snap in order to taunt a Commanders fan in the stands. Stevenson was late to realize that the ball had been snapped and raced over to tip a Hail Mary pass by Jayden Daniels into the hands of wide receiver Noah Brown. Brown was standing alone behind a scrum of players and Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said on Monday that Stevenson was supposed to be guarding Brown on the play.
“I let them down, and those guys hold me to a higher standard,” Stevenson said, via WBBM. “So does everybody in this building. It’s something that can’t happen ever again and won’t happen ever again.”
Eberflus didn’t rule out any internal discipline for Stevenson as a result of the play, but said that any decision on that front will not be publicly announced.
Bears left tackle Braxton Jones may not play in the coming week, but he is not expected to be out for an extended period.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Jones is considered week-to-week with the knee injury he suffered during Sunday’s loss to the Commanders.
Rapoport noted Jones may miss a week or two, but he did not suffer a major injury.
Jones, 25, was a fifth-round pick in 2022. He has started 35 games for Chicago over the last three seasons.
The Bears will be on the road again to face the Cardinals in Week 9.
Bears cornerback Tyrique Stevenson posted a social media apology for his now-infamous taunting of Commanders fans before tipping Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary pass right up to Noah Brown.
But according to Chicago receiver DJ Moore, the matter is not closed.
Moore, who is one of the Bears captains, said in his Monday morning interview with the Molly and Haugh Show on 670 The Score that he and the group of captains are likely to talk about what happened there with the team.
“I didn’t see it happening during the play,” Moore said. “I’ve seen it just how everybody else has seen it [on social media].
“The captains were talking about how we need to really address that. I saw that he put something out that he was sorry, but we’ve still got to address it as a leadership group in front of the team.”
Moore added that he doesn’t think it’s the captains’ place to give out a punishment.
“But we can address it as captains, and upstairs will have to do what they’re going to do,” Moore said. “It’s a lesson learned, for sure. He won’t do that again. But if you bench him it’s just like, that one play — it’s a big play — but that one play doesn’t define him as a player.”
Every football fan in America is talking about the final play of the Commanders’ win over the Bears on Sunday, when Jayden Daniels launched a 52-yard Hail Mary for the game-winning touchdown. But the second-to-last play of the game also deserves some discussion.
On the second-to-last play, the Commanders had the ball at their own 35-yard line with six seconds left. They were out of timeouts. They were too far for Daniels to launch the ball into the end zone for a Hail Mary, and they wanted to get closer and quickly get out of bounds. If the Bears could tackle the Commanders in bounds, it would be game over.
So what did the Bears do? They went into a prevent defense, giving up a huge section of the field to Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin, who caught a pass from Daniels and stepped out of bounds for a 13-yard gain. The play took only four seconds.
Everyone should have known it was coming; Tony Romo drew the exact route that McLaurin was going to run on the telestrator just before the snap. Once McLaurin got out of bounds, Romo explained what it did for the Commanders.
“That gives them a chance now because they couldn’t have reached the end zone on a throw before,” Romo said.
The Commanders took that chance and threw the game-winning Hail Mary. So why did the Bears give them that chance? Bears coach Matt Eberflus explained.
“Because you’re defending touchdown, right? You’re defending touchdown there. And them throwing the ball for 13 yards or 10 yards, whatever that is, doesn’t really matter. It’s always going to come down to that last play,” Eberflus said, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN.
But it did matter. The whole reason the Commanders wanted to pick up the 13 yards before the Hail Mary is because those 13 yards mattered, getting close enough to the end zone for a Hail Mary to be feasible. And if the Bears had played their regular defense, they might have been able to tackle McLaurin inbounds and end the game before the Hail Mary.
The reality is that Eberflus’s defense had a massive letdown. And not just on the Hail Mary, but on the play that set up the Hail Mary.
