After The Whistle: First impression of the Bears' walk-off win over the Commanders
It was another familiar feeling.
The Chicago Bears faced a third and five near midfield at the two-minute warning. They needed a first down to move closer to field goal range. Last season, something would give; Williams would get sacked, or they wouldn’t get the first down.
This time, Williams got the first down on a toss to rookie Colston Loveland.
The Bears also sent Jake Moody out for a game-winning field goal. Last year, these kinds of kicks got blocked and the Bears went back to Halas Hall nursing their wounds.
This time, Moody, the same day he was activated from the practice squad, nailed the 38-yard kick to win it.
Bears win, 25-24. Again.
That’s two weeks in a row where Ben Johnson’s team has won games the Bears have historically lost.
Revel in it all you need. The Bears are 3-2 in a way that doesn’t feel fraudulent like 3-2 last season after the Bears beat up the Panthers.
It’s because the Bears, in their last two games, have shown the Johnson era will be different. The long-term results are to be determined. In the short term, Johnson has gotten a Bears team that’s still relatively similar to the 2024 squad that lost 10 straight games to actually believe they can win.
The results are simple: the Bears are winners of three in a row.
"We know we can win these games in these moments," quarterback Caleb Williams said.
Monday wasn’t against just any team, either.
The Commanders have represented that cursed, sneaky, no-good team the Bears and Bears fans have been hyperaware of, like a bad superstition. This was the team that sent the Bears off to their 10-game losing streak while riding the momentum all the way to the NFC Championship Game.
This was the team the Bears wanted to be in the same atmosphere as. The Bears were able to beat that same team.
The Bears still needed key plays to do it. The biggest difference between Monday and any game last season was how the Bears believed.
Credit Johnson and that entire first-year coaching staff for instilling that belief in a team that never it had beforehand.
"They're not just believing but they understand that, ‘Man, if this thing is close then somebody is going to step up and make a play for us,’" Johnson said. "I think these wins can go a longer way for your program than the blowouts do."
Beating the Commanders didn’t just mean plenty for the Bears’ players. Now, they’re vindicated after staging a comeback just to lose on that Hail Mary.
Monday’s win also had to mean plenty for Johnson. After all, he stayed in Detroit for the 2024 season to chase a Super Bowl. The Commanders’ magical run to the conference championship game ended the Lions’ best chance at a Super Bowl title since the AFL-NFL merger.
This was a game that had so much at stake emotionally for the Bears. Losing in a blowout fashion would have been a letdown, but losing in another heartbreaking fashion would have been devastating for this team.
The Bears never let those stakes get to them. Even as the referees called back Rome Odunze’s touchdown on a very, very iffy illegal formation call, or when the Commanders went up eight points in the fourth quarter on a touchdown drive that sliced right through the Bears’ defense, or even when Jake Moody’s fourth field goal of the night was blocked.
Credit the coaching staff for keeping an entire team together.
"We stayed steady through all the ups and downs that we had and adversity that we had throughout this game," Williams said. "We stayed steady as a team mentally. We didn't flinch and we kept going."
They kept going until the end.
In that ending, the Bears got a walk-off field goal from Moody. He’s the kicker the 49ers spent a draft pick on and eventually cut this season. He joined the Bears on Sept. 12 and was kicking in a primetime game one month later.
How many times have the Bears been on the wrong end of that kind of story?
Instead, the Bears were on the right side of it. The common denominator, of course, is the staff that got him ready for that moment.
"It’s a pretty cool series of events," Moody said. "A couple days ago, I didn’t even know I was playing."
There was no reservation in Moody, even though there was plenty of reason for there to be. This was his last shot at an NFL career.
He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought.
The same goes for a player like Williams, who didn’t have time to dwell on the fact Jayden Daniels is the beloved quarterback hero in his home state.
Instead of letting the tough moments show, Johnson’s Bears have been taught to do the opposite.
"Because in those moments we don't have time for that," Williams said. "It's simple as that. It's time to go win."
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