By Max Harper
The Bears were out of timeouts and all of a sudden losing the game when quarterback Caleb Williams zipped a pass up the right seam to rookie tight end Colston Loveland with 25 seconds to play Sunday.
Loveland caught the ball at the Bengals’ 37 inside a triangle of defenders, took a shot from safety Jordan Battle, staggered, spun and kept running.
Wide receiver Rome Odunze was shouting at him to go down quickly, so the Bears could spike the ball and kick a field goal — before he realized he could score. Kyle Monangai, who played one of the best games by a Bears rookie running back, squealed as Loveland sprinted across the goal line for a 58-yard touchdown with 17 seconds left.
Had Loveland been tackled, the clock might have expired before the Bears could sprint to the line of scrimmage to spike the ball. Quarterback Caleb Williams watched Bengals defenders try to chase him down and cheered for Loveland to go faster.
“You’ve taken it the distance,” Williams said. “Now go finish the game.”
On the sideline, no one was happier about the Bears’ dizzying near-disaster of a 47-42 victory than defensive lineman Daniel Hardy, who let the Bengals’ onside kick hit him in the foot with 1:43 to play. Or perhaps running back Brittain Brown, who decided to slide to force the Bengals to burn their last timeout with 2:24 to play when he could have gained a first down and sealed the game.
“I was thinking to myself the whole time, ‘Please — please — let us win this game,’ ’’ Brown said.
The Bears did — barely. How they got there was a dangerous cocktail of mistakes, ineptitude — Joe Flacco, age 40, threw for 470 yards with a sore shoulder — and momentum inside a stadium that had cleared out when the Bears were on pace to win in a blowout.
The final 1:43 featured three touchdown drives of 49 seconds or less.
‘‘Straight madness,” wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus said.
[Highlight] The final two minutes of the Bears-Bengals
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