Caleb Williams powers 'legacy' win in Bears' playoff comeback over Packers
Down 21-3 at halftime, Williams led the Bears to 25 fourth-quarter points including another late, clutch game-winning TD.
CHICAGO — Caleb Williams returned to the Chicago Bears’ locker room late Saturday night with a foam cheese-grater hat atop his head, stopping first by DJ Moore’s locker stall and giving the receiver’s 2-year-old son, Denniston Oliver, a fist bump. Denniston Oliver, too, was wearing a foam cheese-grater, and while he may not realize it yet, his dad and Williams had just put an indelible stamp on the NFL’s oldest rivalry.
In the most dramatic way, too. Again.
Three weeks after Williams and Moore connected on a game-winning 46-yard overtime touchdown pass, the duo once again turned Soldier Field upside down with a 25-yard TD pass on the Bears’ final possession, with 1:43 remaining, to give the Bears a 31-27 playoff win over the Green Bay Packers.
The delirium pulsing across Soldier Field became instantly unforgettable, a no-bleeping-way eruption after another mind-bending finish.
Of course, it was Williams, the bold quarterback who arrived in Chicago a little more than 20 months ago vowing to write a new, more successful chapter of Bears history, using his Sharpie for Saturday night’s fantastic finish. Williams threw two touchdown passes in the final five minutes and added a key 2-point conversion throw.
“When the lights are bright,” Moore said, “he’s brighter than them lights out there.”
This time, the degree of difficulty on the Bears’ final TD was so much lower, teed up by a well-timed and well-designed play call — a fake wide receiver screen to Luther Burden III that baited the Green Bay defense and, most significantly, cornerback Carrington Valentine. The Packers bit the hook. And just like that, Moore was free, open up the left sideline with one of the most cold-blooded quarterbacks in the sport tossing him the football.
Burden’s eyes grew wide as he watched the Packers defense come for him.
“We got ’em,” Burden said with a smile. “I knew it was a touchdown.”
Moore did, too, with Valentine helpless in pursuit.
“We worked on that a few times in practice,” Moore said. “It played out the same way.”
Williams loved the call by coach Ben Johnson.
“Once we lined up,” he said, “I actually knew we were about to hit it just off the demeanor of the guys on the other side of the ball. I just had a feeling that that was going to be the one.”
Indeed it was, the triple-exclamation point on a ridiculous Bears rally, a comeback from 18 points down at halftime for the franchise’s first playoff victory in 15 years. The organization’s biggest postseason comeback ever. Against the rival that had spent the previous 30-plus years ripping their hearts out.
Payback, the old saying goes …
Don’t think it was lost on Williams and the rest of this team that the Packers had spent the days leading up to Saturday night publicly promising get-back for their , an overtime miracle that allowed the Bears to win the NFC North.