What’s more fun than second-guessing NFL coaches? Nothing, that’s what. So let’s do it every week, right here. This time, we’re going outside the bounds of an NFL game to discuss what happens after the most memorable catch — and most notorious defensive failure — of the NFL season.
The scenario: Two seconds left in the Bears-Commanders game. Washington on its own 48. Jayden Daniels takes the snap, and from his own 35, sends it high into the Maryland night, and then … well, you know what happens next.
Euphoria! And on the Bears sideline, devastation. Oh, there’s so much to discuss here.
The scenario from the other side: The Daniels-to-Noah Brown Hail Mary only happens if the Bears defense breaks down on multiple fronts, starting with cornerback Tyrique Stevenson. In perhaps the greatest case of eff-around-and-find-out — or instant karma, if you like — in NFL history, Stevenson was taunting the FedEx Field Commanders fans … and then ended up tipping the ball right into Brown’s hands.
I urge you to rewatch that video as many times as you need to (Washington fans: infinite, Bears fans: 0) to get the point here. Stevenson was actually talking trash while the play was unfolding. His back was completely to the receivers! You can see Bears fans in the audience pointing to him to pay attention! This image is going to be memed forever:
Why did this happen? The breakdown on the Bears side of the ball was total and complete. Let’s start with the upfield formation. The Bears rush three and leave one man as a spy against Daniels, which … why? It wasn’t like he was trying to get a first down, this was a case of end zone or nothing. If he’d crossed the line of scrimmage, Daniels would have had to go 52 yards to score — and if you can’t stop a scrambling quarterback in 52 yards, you deserve not just losing but relegation.
Watch it all fall apart on All-22 here:
But then you’ve got the downfield scrum, and this is where the problems really begin. You can’t ever let a man get behind you in the defensive secondary, and yet that’s exactly what happened:
The Bears had the Commanders receivers outnumbered 7 to 4 — would have been 8 to 4, had Chicago dropped that spy back — and still everyone converged on the ball and left Brown wide open in the end zone.
Compare this with another would-be Hail Mary game-winner from earlier in the day, where Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield nearly did the impossible:
Tampa Bay’s Rakim Jarrett makes the catch, but he’s already out of bounds; the Falcons used the back of the end zone as a de facto defender and had men all around Jarrett. There’s no guarantee the Falcons would have defended the Hail Mary had Mayfield put it about five yards shorter, but having defenders nearby is always a more sound strategy than leaving a man wide open.
What to do about Stevenson?: Most of the blame, fairly or not, will fall on Stevenson’s head. As it turned out, the Bears would have been better off if he’d kept on jawing rather than getting involved in the play and tipping the ball.
Stevenson : “To Chicago and teammates, my apologies for lack of awareness and focus. The game ain’t over until zeros hit the clock. Can’t take anything for granted. Notes taken, improvement will happen. #Beardown.”
Bears captain DJ Moore indicated that steps will be taken. “The captains were talking about how we need to really address that,” Moore . “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 didn’t get into the issue of punishment. “That’s not up for us to do,” he said. “But we can address it as captains, and upstairs will have to do what they’re going to do. 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.”
Stevenson has started 21 of his 22 games in the league, and has five career interceptions over that span, including a pick-six earlier this season against Tennessee. He has 121 career tackles, 88 solo. And if the Bears were feeling particularly vengeful, he’s two years into a four-year, $6.5-million contract that carries a dead cap hit right now of $2.3 million. Cutting him seems extreme for one bad play … but it was a really bad play.
So. Your call. What do the Bears do now?