The cardiac Bears nearly did it again on “Sunday Night Football.”
In the waning seconds of an instant classic between two Super Bowl contenders, the Bears lined up with four seconds left and no timeouts down 42-38 at the 49ers’ 2-yard line.
Quarterback Caleb Williams was in the shotgun with running back D’Andre Swift motioning out to the left for a swing pass that was quickly covered by rookie safety Malik Mustapha, forcing Williams to scramble around looking for an open receiver.
Williams scrambled toward the left sideline and was forced to throw off his back foot as the pass rush arrived, looking for rookie receivers Jahdae Walker and Luther Burden, but Williams’ pass fell short as the game ended, and the 49ers celebrated.
“We didn’t quite get aligned in the formation we wanted to. It’s on me,” Bears coach Ben Johnson told reporters postgame. “I didn’t get him the call fast enough, so he’s trying to piecemeal it together. I have got to do a better job on that.”
Williams had similar thoughts to those of his offensive guru head coach.
“We ended up getting lined up with not much time (on the play clock). We were slightly lined up wrong. I didn’t have enough time to be able to fix it,” Williams said postgame. “We just had to try to make something out of nothing in that situation. And then we had a shot. With all of that going on, time running down, us misaligning, things like that. We had a shot, and [I’ve] just gotta give my guys a shot in that situation.”
Receiver DJ Moore did wind up running free on the opposite side of the field, but Williams was too busy dealing with the pass rush and was looking closer to his side of the field by the time his receiver was open and calling for the ball.
The play clock before the final snap had just hit zero and Chicago could have been called for a delay of game penalty, something 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was acutely aware of and is why he did not call a timeout.
“I thought about it,” Shanahan said when asked whether he considered calling a timeout. “We wanted to see the look, and then they just went fast, so we let it ride.”
It surely brings back memories of the 2014 Super Bowl, when the Seahawks were out of timeouts but looking to run the clock down as they hoped to score a touchdown and leave the Patriots with no time left.
Coach Bill Belichick saw chaos on the Seattle sideline and elected not to call a timeout, which eventually resulted in a Russell Wilson pass that was intercepted at the goal line by Malcolm Butler to seal a New England Super Bowl win.
The play before the game-sealing incomplete pass, the Bears dove deep into the playbook on second down from the 13 with 21 seconds remaining when they called a hook-and-ladder with Colston Loveland lateraling it back to Swift.
That play was stopped at the 2-yard line. The Bears then spiked the ball with four seconds left to set up the final down.
The Bears loss comes after the team clinched the NFC North title with the Packers loss on Saturday. However it did end their hopes of earning the top seed in the conference.
That will now be decided on Saturday night in Week 18 with the winner of the 49ers and Seahawks game earning a bye and home-field advantage.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
