Bear’s defense has few answers for the Hail Mary’s unforgivable misstep

LANDOVER, Md. – With his voice cracking at times, Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson was stunned, like every other defender in the Bears locker room, after being burned by Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels’ improbable 52-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Noah Brown on a Hail Mary — an excruciating dagger on the final play in an 18-15 Bears loss Sunday at Northwest Stadium.

“Pissed off,” Johnson said. “Pissal.”

But while many of his teammates struggled to explain what went wrong, Johnson didn’t need to see the film to know there was one glaring glitch that allowed the play to succeed.

“There should never be anyone wide open in the back of the end zone,” Johnson said. “We just didn’t execute it well enough. I can’t tell… who should be there. Don’t know. But there should never be anyone wide open in the back of the end zone. We all have to find a way to perform better along the way.”

It will take a lot of time to parse this. There were two seconds left in the game and the ball on the Commanders’ 48-yard line. The victory seemed so certain that the exuberant Bears cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, certainly feeling like the final play was a fait accompli as usual, gestured to the fans and raised his arms, his back to the line of scrimmage as the ball was snapped.

Stevenson quickly returned to defend the play. Daniels evaded the Bears’ rush and scrambled from the left side of the field to the right. He twisted his body and unleashed a towering pass toward a horde of players — including Bears defenders Elijah Hicks, Kevin Byard, Jaylon Jones and Stevenson — inside the 5-yard line.

Stevenson dived to the front of the pile and appeared to tip the ball. And it jumped over the scrum to an open Brown in the end zone. From start to finish the piece took 17 seconds. Delirium broke out on one side and devastation on the other.

Stevenson, who had a rough day including an unnecessary roughness call, said he will talk Monday. But apologized for his actions on Twitter:

“To Chicago and teammates, I apologize for the lack of awareness and focus…. The game isn’t over until zeros appear on the clock. I can’t take anything for granted. Notes have been taken, improvements will take place.”

But whether anyone was talking or not, the overriding emotion of disappointment and frustration was palpable in the Bears’ locker room.

“Right now, it’s a little bit of a blur,” Hicks said. ‘I have to look at it. But as I remember, it felt like that play (lasted) all day. That play took forever. I don’t know how long – 17 seconds? That’s crazy.”

The Bears practice the Hail Mary play like all NFL teams do. But in the actual moment it is always more chaotic.

“Anything can happen with a Hail Mary,” Byard said. “You could talk about the details and what everyone should do. Apparently the quarterback had a lot of time to scramble back there.

“In that scenario, I’m expected to be the jumper trying to jump and tip the ball down. But when you’re standing back there and everyone’s piling up, it’s hard to get that angle, hard to get a running start. By the time the ball is in the air, you’re trying to fight for position, and the ball is tipped into the air. In the end, they just let their backman make a play. We probably didn’t execute it in the way we needed to.”

The failure of the final play was a cruel twist for the Bears defense, which gave the Bears an opportunity to steal the game by holding the Commanders without a touchdown until that fateful play.

So when running back Roschon Johnson scored on a one-yard run and the Bears added a two-point conversion with 25 seconds to play, all the Bears defense had to do was prevent a miracle. After their yeoman’s work in bending but not breaking to give the Bears a chance, somehow the impossible happened.

Daniels completed passes of 11 yards to Zach Ertz and 13 yards to Terry McLaurin to give the Commanders a first down at the Bears 48-yard line. Then all the hail broke loose.

It didn’t help that Daniels came within striking distance. And the Bears had many more problems that led to their demise. But it was still the Hail Mary that defeated them.

“It all comes down to that piece – being performed at that time,” Johnson said. “We can go back and say there were plenty of moments where we could have won the game. But no other game had more intensity and higher stakes than this. We have to find a way to come out on top.”

In the aftermath, that was the starting point for most of the Bears’ defenders. Linebacker TJ Edwards found himself in a no man’s land in the middle of the field, neither rushing Daniels nor defending the pass. He spoke for several people when asked if he was Daniels’ “spy” in that piece.

“In a way. I have to go back and look at it and see what we could have done differently,” Edwards said. “You know, it’s a Hail Mary. Don’t know.”