On 4th and 1 in the second quarter of their Week 12 matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams took a designed run for a first down but got popped along the sideline by Steelers S Jalen Ramsey. While it was a legal hit and wasn’t flagged, Bears head coach Ben Johnson believed the play gave the Bears offense a “spark.”
“Want to get Caleb out of bounds just a little bit sooner,” he said. “But, you know, the crazy thing is, when things like that happen, it almost ignites your sideline even more.
“It was a completely legal hit — you know, he was in-bounds. But at the same time, just to see the whole sideline come to life, I think it kind of has another spark there to your offense and really the whole team,” Johnson said in his press conference on Monday via the team’s YouTube channel.
After the play, there was a little bit of yelling along the sideline with the Bears coming to Williams’ defense. It clearly wasn’t a play that should’ve been penalized. Williams wasn’t even signaling that he was going to give himself up. While he was headed toward the sideline, quarterbacks have taken advantage, tiptoeing along the sideline for extra yards.
But a play like that can galvanize a team. Seeing their leader at quarterback get lit up in a way they might not have liked can be a spark, as Johnson said. The Bears wound up scoring the game-tying touchdown on the drive in which Ramsey hit Williams, and went on to score on four of their next five drives, taking a lead they never relinquished.
Of course, things like that could work both ways. The Steelers defense could’ve seen Ramsey making a hit like that and took it as a statement and played with some fire in their belly like the Bears did afterward. That wasn’t the case. The hit occurred along Chicago’s sideline, but the only Steelers player who ran up after Ramsey was shoved on the sideline by C.J. Gardner-Johnson was his safety partner, Kyle Dugger.
It’s hard to be too upset about that given that Mike Tomlin has gotten on the Steelers for being undisciplined at times and taking too many unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. But given Johnson’s statement, it’s at least something worth noting. Even the best teams in the league try to find something to give them a spark, even if it’s not necessarily true. The Bears took exception with the hit, even though it was completely legal, and used it to spark them. The Steelers didn’t.
It’s a stretch to say this play made or broke the game for the Steelers. There was plenty else that went wrong. But it’s a play that Johnson seemed to think positively impacted the game for the Bears, when the Steelers very well could’ve turned it into a positive for them.
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