Eberflus on 13-yard completion before game-winning Hail Mary: “doesn’t really matter” |
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Head coach Matt Eberflus and the Chicago Bears have had their blunders before. But perhaps none were worse than the sequence of events that led to the game-winning hail mary, which gave the Washington Commanders the 18-15 win over the Bears.
After the kickoff return, the Commanders had the ball at their own 24-yard line with 19 seconds and one timeout. The first pass was incomplete, now 12 seconds left. The second pass was completed to tight end Zach Ertz for 11 yards. Washington took their final timeout of the game with five seconds left at their own 35-yard line. Five seconds is enough time for a sideline play before attempting the hail mary, but Eberflus decided to go into touchdown prevention at that point. “You’re defending (against a) touchdown there and them throwing a ball for 13 yards or 10 yards, whatever that is, doesn’t really matter,” Eberflus said. “It’s always going to come down to that last play, and it came down to a two-second play to the last play, and we got to execute on that one.” Of course, the Commanders did not go for the touchdown at that point; they were not close enough. So, rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels had a 13-yard completion to receiver Terry McLaurin, who immediately went out of bounds. There were no Bears defenders in the area to try to keep him in bounds and end the game. That is what allowed Daniels to attempt the 52-yard hail mary with two seconds left. Two seconds was enough for the miracle play. But there was more to the Hail Mary than just a miraculous play. At the time the ball was snapped, Chicago’s cornerback, Tyrique Stevenson, was facing the other way as he was engaging with the home crowd for the Commanders instead of ensuring the game was sealed. He was one of the players involved in the tipped ball to Washington’s Noah Brown for the win. Crazy video I got of #Commanders vs #bears walk off pic.twitter.com/mXFkR5wOGW Eberflus did not comment on that after the game but said the Chicago defense has worked on the Hail Mary frequently in practice. “We’ve practiced that play 100 times since we’ve been here and again, I’ll have to look at what the execution was of that. But, we have a body on the body, boxing guys out like basketball at the very end. We have one guy that’s the rim that knocks the ball down. We got a back tip guy that goes behind the pile,” Eberflus said. “I got to look at it and detail it out and make sure we’re better next time. But again, that’s a hard way to lose.” The Bears did not play as well as Washington in this game; it is a game the Commanders deserved to win. They played better on offense throughout the game and exploited Chicago’s greatest weakness on defense - their run defense. The Commanders had three players rush for over 50 yards, including Daniels. Running back Austin Ekeler had the second-most rushing yards for him as a Commander and averaged 7.4 yards per carry. As a whole, their team averaged 5.2 yards per carry against Chicago’s defense. When asked after the game about the defense’s struggles against the run, Eberflus did not provide much of an answer. “(Daniel)’s a tough contain, so we got to do a really good job of that and we did it with four. We did it with five. We did it with four off of one side, three off of one side, two on the other,” Eberflus said. “So, we did that to some success and I thought we really did a good job in the second half in the third downs. We were pretty good in the first half on third downs as well, getting ourselves out of those drives. But again, the first series, we didn’t fit the run the way we wanted it to. We talked about that on the sideline. But again, we just got to be more consistent.” In their next game on Sun. Nov. 3 against the Arizona Cardinals (3:05 p.m. / CBS), they will face another quarterback who knows how to use his legs in Kyler Murray and can hurt you through the air. He will be coming off a strong performance against the Miami Dolphins where he put up 307 passing yards and led his team down the field for a game-winning field goal in the final seconds of the game. Despite both teams coming into this game with four wins, the Bears are sitting alone in last in the NFC North, while the Cardinals are in a three-way tie for first in the NFC West.
