The pass of the century then brutal reality: the football gods won’t let the Bears have nice things

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A playoff game often pivots on a single moment. The Bears thought they had theirs. Down a score, driving to keep the game alive, the Bears had the ball on the Rams’ 14-yard line. Fourth down. Four yards to pick up a fresh set of downs. A play to keep their season alive. The ball in Caleb Williams’s hands.

And then it happened.

It may be the throw of the century. Williams gathered the snap, surveyed the landscape. His receivers were covered, the pocket collapsing. As the pressure arrived, he turned his back to the line of scrimmage and sprinted a full 10 yards in the wrong direction before turning around and unleashing a throw almost blind. The ball looped over the head of Rams corner Cobie Durant and into the hands of tight end Cole Kmet.

A week after authoring one of the all-time greatest postseason plays against the Packers, Williams topped it. He threw the ball from 26 yards behind the line of scrimmage, the ball travelling 51 yards in the air. There are maybe two or three humans on Earth who could even attempt the throw, let alone complete it.

The cameras cut to Rams coach Sean McVay on the sideline, who stood frozen for five seconds. Williams had done it again; the Cardiac Bears had done it again, coming from behind to tie up a game late. In that moment, the Team of Destiny stuff felt real.

But it wasn’t enough. The Bears, like the Bills, cannot have nice things. Even greatness has to be wrapped in misery. What should have been the moment, the knockout blow to push the Bears to the NFC title game, was not enough. Eventually, the live-on-the-edge luck ran out.

The Williams touchdown tied the game up at 17-17, forcing overtime. After the Bears stuffed the Rams on their opening overtime possession, Williams spun more magic to keep Chicago on the field, before spraying a throw into the hands of Rams safety Cam Curl. It was his third interception of the day and a costly mistake too many.

It was time for Matthew Stafford’s moment, a holy bleep throw of his own: drilling a pass to Davante Adams into a tight window along the sidelines. In a grubby, disheveled performance for the veteran, Stafford was finally at his best. He raised his game on a must-have-it drive, dictating things from the line of scrimmage and marching the Rams into field-goal range, where a man knows as the Thiccer Kicker would boot the game-winning score.

It was a cruel ending for Chicago. Their much-maligned defense came alive against the league’s No 1 offense, disorienting Stafford with a battery of blitzes and clamping down the Rams’ star receivers. But the Bears left too many plays on the field. On Williams’ final interception, DJ Moore ramped down his route, loafing on the team’s biggest play of the season and guiding the Rams’ safety to Williams’ throw. They dropped too many balls, struggled to convert in short-yardage and picked up three of six fourth-down efforts.

McVay will know he got away with one. It was one of the most befuddling games of his coaching career. McVay had little feel for the flow of the game or a grasp of its snowy conditions. Late in the fourth quarter, the Rams had 34 pass dropbacks to 10 runs against one of the league’s worst run defenses in a driving snowstorm. It smacked of a coach overthinking things, going down with his gameplan rather than assessing the situation.

Still, the Rams found a way. No matter how gnarly the performance, they are a win away from the Super Bowl. It will be a slog against the Seahawks. The Bears showed fresh ways to stifle the Rams’ passing game, and they were forced to play a fifth quarter in overtime on Sunday, while the Seahawks had their feet up after three quarters against the Niners on Saturday.

The Bears will look back with regret. They got the magical moment from the magical player. They’ve ridden close game luck all season. There’s no guarantee they’ll stick around at this level next season – and championship windows are never as long as teams think. But they head into the offseason with one certainty: they have one of the league’s best quarterbacks. And they haven’t been able to say that since the 1940s.

MVP of the week

Milton Williams, DL, New England Patriots. You could hand this to any member of the Patriots’ defense. They blasted the Texans in an ugly, turnover-filled 28-16 win. The game will be remembered for CJ Stroud, who threw four interceptions and could have given up three or four more. Not since Donovan McNabb – allegedly – gagged in the huddle during a Super Bowl has a quarterback had such a clear meltdown in a playoff game – and for the second game in a row. He missed receivers high; he missed them wide. Stroud finished with a passer rating of 28.0. Throwing the ball into the floor on every play would have given him a passer rating of 39.6.

Stroud’s disasterclass was not all of his own making. The Patriots’ defense made life uncomfortable, crushing the pocket and playing sticky coverage on the back-end. Williams led the way, stuffing the run and teeing off against the pass. He finished the game with two pressures and effectively forced an interception when he forced Stroud’s target to fall over by knocking a lineman into his feet. It was the brilliance of Williams inside that allowed the Patriots’ edge-rushers to feast. And they needed that pass-rush to show up to offset a dismal performance from their offense, which finished with three turnovers and a 30% success rate, the lowest in a Drake Maye start.

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Stat of the week

The Bills are the first team to win a playoff game in six straight seasons and not claim a Super Bowl.

It was a heartbreaker for the Bills in Denver, probably the most painful postseason defeat since “13 seconds”. They lost 33-30 to the Broncos in overtime in a game that will be remembered for a controversial catch-interception call (more on that later). But pinning the loss on the officials absolves Buffalo of blame. They lacked receivers who could win one-on-one. The defense lacked game-breakers at all three levels, struggling to manufacture a pass-rush unless they blitzed. For some of Saturday, they were able to conceal some of those faults. Sean McDermott schemed up enough to get his defense off the field for five straight drives. But the Bills’ offense could not stop turning the ball over, coughing it up five times. Bo Nix only had to rip three deep shots down the field and draw a pair of pass interference penalties to inch the Broncos over the line.

Plenty of blame for the defeat will fall on Josh Allen. He struggled to hit on throws down the field, finishing 0 for 9 on attempts over 20 yards (with two interceptions), according to Next Gen Stats. He made plenty of hero plays to keep the game close and force overtime, but also made crucial errors. A fumble with seconds left in the first half set the Broncos up in field goal range. He missed an open shot to Dawson Knox late in the game, which would have been a walk-in touchdown. He also buried a screen pass to Khalil Shakir, which almost certainly wiped another touchdown off the board and forced the Bills to kick a field goal. “I feel like I let my teammates down tonight,” Allen said. “[I’m] extremely sorry.”

Change will come in Buffalo but they may never get a better opportunity than this season. For as weak as this roster was compared to previous years, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow failed to make the playoffs, and the Bills would have had a good chance at beating the Patriots in the AFC championship game.

Video of the week

It felt like 49ers-Seahawks was over 13 seconds into the game. Rashid Shaheed, picked up by Seattle at the trade deadline, returned the opening kickoff to the house. Seattle roared. The stadium shook – and the Niners never recovered. Think about this: the Seahawks put up a 40 burger despite only finishing with 106 net yards passing as Sam Darnold dealt with an oblique injury. By the fourth quarter, Drew Lock was in at quarterback to guide home the 41-6 blowout.

No team is as complete as the Seahawks. They have a swarming defense, a game-tilting special teams unit, a mastermind at head coach and they’ve found their run game over the last month. If Darnold doesn’t turn the ball over, they are the favorites to win it all.

Elsewhere around the league

Sean Payton has already announced that Jarrett Stidham will be Denver’s starting quarterback in the AFC title game after Bo Nix fractured his ankle against the Bills. Stidham is a solid backup but he hasn’t taken a regular-season snap in two years. Given that, would Payton be at all tempted to give his friend Drew Brees a call? We saw the Colts try the experiment with Philip Rivers. Why not ask Brees to join for a week as an insurance policy if Stidham struggles? If Brees isn’t up for it, you can start rattling down the list: Peyton Manning? Ryan Tannehill? Cam Newton? Andrew Luck? Colin Kaepernick?

Let’s talk officiating. Given the rules, the ending of Bills-Broncos was correctly officiated. Brandin Cooks’ catch was not in fact a catch, as he didn’t survive the ground. Given that the ball never hit the deck, there was no other ruling that could be made than an interception to the Broncos. The other controversial calls – two DPIs on the Broncos’ final drive – shouldn’t even be controversial: the first and closest was offset by the Bills roughing the passer; the second was as blatant as it gets. Yet the fact that the public has so little faith in the process is in itself a problem. After all, this is a league that screwed up its own kickoff rules in a playoff game, and after Bills tackle Spencer Brown admitted, “I was holding the piss out of some people today, and they didn’t call it.” The referees swallowed their whistles until they were forced to intervene in overtime. Heck, they could have ended the game with a holding call on the Bills that would have given the Broncos a walk-off safety. Whether it’s slimming down the rules, adding extra officials or involving more technology, the NFL needs to find a way to up its standards and restore some confidence in officiating.
Matt Ryan has made his first move as the Falcons’ football czar. Atlanta announced the hiring of former Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski on Saturday, beating the Titans and Ravens to the two-time Coach of the Year. Stefanski is a good coach, but his fit with the Falcons is no slam-dunk. He is walking into another clouded quarterback situation without a ton of resources to overhaul the roster. But he will be taking over a team with enough talent playing in a winnable division.
After protracted negotiations on the terms of his contract, John Harbaugh has finally signed on to be the new Giants head coach. “I expect and want to make the playoffs next year,” Harbaugh told The Athletic after signing his deal, worth $20m a year.

Last up on the coaching carousel: Matt LaFleur reached an agreement on a long-term extension with the Packers. There were persistent rumors that Green Bay could move on from LaFleur, whether by firing him or trading him away. Keeping LaFleur was always the logical move, though. He is one of the best offensive schemers in the league. Without costly injuries to Micah Parsons and Tucker Kraft, the Packers may have gone deeper in the playoffs. And if the Packers had let him go, LaFleur would have immediately vaulted to the top of the list of available candidates. In a murky coaching market without a ton of sure things, LaFleur is as close as it gets. Moving on from him in those circumstances would have been lunacy.

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