Eddie Jackson sat deep inside his locker stall at Cleveland Browns Stadium, slumped in disbelief. Jackson wanted a minute to assemble himself, to let the emotion settle in, to seek out the phrases to elucidate Sunday’s surreal collapse, a 20-17 Chicago Bears loss that took what was left of the workforce’s slim playoff hopes and blew them to smithereens.
“Man,” Jackson mentioned together with his voice cracking. “I don’t even know what to say. There are obviously some plays we wish we had back. But this just … I don’t know man. This one cuts so deep.”
Across the Bears locker room, defensive deal with Justin Jones was having comparable problem determining what had simply occurred, how a day filled with defensive playmaking had ended with such anguish because the Bears have been outscored 13-0 within the fourth quarter.
“This is devastating,” Jones mentioned. “Devastating. They all hurt. But this one hurt.”
Safety Jaquan Brisker simply stored shaking his head, struggling to fathom Sunday’s late unraveling, the third sport this season wherein the Bears misplaced after main by double digits heading into the fourth quarter.
“It’s hard to explain,” Brisker mentioned. “Just losing hurts. Period.”
Make no mistake. The sharp pains from this one will take longer to recede. The NFL’s unofficial 24-hour rule isn’t one-size-fits-all. Thus the Bears should stay by way of the nightmare of replaying Sunday’s failure in all its gory element, notably for a protection that carried the workforce the whole afternoon however then crashed within the late phases.
That’s why there was a lot shock, a lot dejection inside that visiting locker room Sunday. All of it solely compounded when the Bears’ last play Hail Mary from the Browns 45-yard line ricocheted out of an eight-player crowd in the long run zone and towards Darnell Mooney, who had a storybook game-winning catch in his lap. But he bobbled the soccer and in the end kicked it to Browns security D’Anthony Bell.
“I wish I could have had it,” Mooney mentioned.
Yep. Painful.
Suddenly, the protection’s 4 sacks felt inadequate. Suddenly, the Bears’ three interceptions — together with a 45-yard third-quarter decide six by linebacker Tremaine Edmunds — appeared so insignificant.
In specific, the Bears protection should stay with the 212 passing yards Browns quarterback Joe Flacco put up within the fourth quarter alone, together with an unbelievable 51-yard TD dart to Amari Cooper and a 34-yard third-and-15 magic trick on Cleveland’s game-winning drive.
On the previous, Flacco squeezed a fastball into zone protection between three defenders with Brisker, Edmunds and cornerback Terell Smith converging on the move.
“I thought it was going to be an interception to be honest,” Brisker mentioned. “There wasn’t much of a window. We had three people right there.”
Added Bears coach Matt Eberflus: “That ball should have been picked. We have to do a good job of breaking on that, envisioning that. That ball was in the air long enough. At least deflect it.”
Instead, Cooper snatched the ball on the Bears 27-yard line, then sprinted up the correct sideline for a game-tying rating with 3:08 remaining.
Not lengthy after a Bears punt on the following possession, Flacco’s 34-yard connection to tight finish David Njoku (10 catches, 104 yards, one TD) left the Bears protection in disbelief once more, a completion that pushed the Browns into vary for his or her game-winning area purpose simply because the Bears appeared prepared to use their very own ending touches to the sport.
On that third-and-15 play, Eberflus dialed up a six-man strain which despatched Brisker, Edmunds and cornerback Kyler Gordon at Flacco as blitzers. But that additionally left Jones, a 6-foot-3, 309-pound defensive deal with, backpedaling into protection as Njoku slipped free behind the protection.
Flacco drifted backward sufficient to purchase time, then floated his move right into a wide-open window simply as he was hit by Brisker.
“I’m in coverage. On third-and-15,” Jones mentioned. “I’m just doing what’s called, man. I don’t think I’m the best fit for coverage on Njoku. You know what I mean? But it is what it is.”
Added Jackson: “That’s one of those pressures, man, where if it doesn’t get home, it’s going to hit big. And that’s what happened.”
Eberflus was left to reply for that decision after the sport.
“The thought process there on third-and-15 is you’re going to make him throw it and you’re going to go tackle the catch,” he mentioned. “Then they’re going to end up punting it. Maybe they’ll get half of (the needed yardage). But (the pressure) is to get the ball out of his hands fast.”
Eberflus was additionally requested to elucidate his workforce’s pattern of squandering large fourth-quarter leads.
“It comes down to the fundamentals,” he mentioned. “When you watch the tape and really look at it, it’ll be that and it’ll be about playmaking. We have to make the plays down the stretch. That’s what it’s always going to be about.”
Maybe this was all only a well timed reminder of simply how steep the climb towards aggressive relevance really is and the way for much longer of a journey these Bears actually have. The Bears simply weren’t sharp sufficient Sunday or opportunistic sufficient. And they paid the worth.
In a “gotta have it” sport in December, Justin Fields and the offense didn’t get a lot of something. The Bears’ lone landing drive lined 1 yard after a Jackson interception and someway required six snaps because of a flurry of penalties and errors by each groups.
On the Bears’ different 14 possessions, they managed simply 12 first downs and one area purpose whereas going three-and-out eight occasions.
Fields (19-for-40 passing, 166 yards, one TD, two interceptions) by no means generated important momentum and couldn’t put collectively a scoring drive with the sport on the road within the last minutes. The operating sport (27 makes an attempt, 88 yards) was a non-factor. And the Bears have been left — in opposition to a majorly depleted Browns workforce — to lean exhausting on their protection.
That unit really appeared as much as the duty, too. Perhaps no play higher signified the protection’s “We got this” vibes than Tyrique Stevenson’s interception late within the third quarter, an excellent takeaway by the rookie cornerback on the purpose line one snap after the Bears had given the ball away with a Trent Taylor muffed punt catch.
In zone protection, Stevenson observed Njoku bending his path to the within, guessed on Flacco’s intentions and broke accordingly. “I just trusted myself, trusted my instincts and went,” Stevenson mentioned. “As soon as I broke on it, he literally let the ball go.”
That was the form of contribution nice groups use as gasoline in season-changing victories. And for greater than two hours Sunday, the Bears felt their unity and resolve pushing them towards one thing significant. They had each intention of producing a late-season tear.
Said Jones: “If you give us a crumb, we’ll come back with a loaf. We wanted to make the playoffs. We wanted to have our chance to make a run for it. And it was right there.”
Alas, within the sport’s last quarter-hour, the Bears couldn’t punctuate what was setting as much as be a belief-building street upset. Alas, they have been gashed by a collection of clutch large performs by the Browns and couldn’t muster the right response. Alas, they tumbled to 5-9, light out of the NFC playoff hunt and left Cleveland with that sickening feeling.
“We came out fighting,” Jackson mentioned. “We knew what was at stake with this. We hold training. We hold preaching, ‘Finish, finish, finish.’ And it’s like, we have been so shut. We simply have to complete. It’s loopy, man. It is.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com