Bears escape with wild 47-42 win vs. Bengals on 58-yard last-minute TD

CINCINNATI — 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.

The last 3:07 featured a Bears interception nullified by a penalty, a Bears pick-six that replay sent backward 96 yards, one converted Bengals onside kick and a Hail Mary that the Bears played the right way.

“By far the craziest thing I’ve seen,” cornerback Nahshon Wright said.

At the two-minute warning, the Bears had a 99.7% chance of winning. Before the pass to Loveland, they had a 74.5% chance of losing.

“It’s taking years off my life,” safety Kevin Byard said.

Linebacker Tremaine Edmunds intercepted a pass at the Bears’ 4 and returned the ball 96 yards for a touchdown to go ahead by 20 points with 2:42 to play when officials called for a replay review. They ruled Edmunds had been down by contact when he fell to the ground to collect the pick and sent the Bears back to their 4.

The Bears ran for one yard, took a delay of game and ran for one yard again. The Bengals used timeouts after each play. On third-and-10, Brown ran toward the left sideline and, with the first-down marker in view, slid so he wouldn’t be pushed out of bounds.

“Bonehead mistake,” Brown said

The Bears punted to the Bengals, who were down 14 and out of timeouts. Three plays later, tight end Noah Fant caught a 23-yard touchdown pass. The Bengals converted the two-point conversion to go down six, knowing that a touchdown would win the game.

All the Bears had to do was recover the onside kick and take three knees. Evan McPherson’s sidewinding bouncer hit Hardy’s foot, though, and was recovered by linebacker Owen Burks. It was merely the latest Bears special-teams mistake — they let Deerfield native Charlie Jones return the opening kickoff for a 98-yard touchdown and had a field goal blocked at the end of the first half.

It took the Bengals only six plays to score after the onside kick — a nine-yard touchdown catch by wide receiver Andrei Iosivas. The Bears had taken a timeout one play earlier, trying to conserve time.

“They want to have the last score themselves and win the game,” coach Ben Johnson said. “We want to have enough time just in case to rebuttal. That’s the strategic part of it that can be a little bit fun.”

The Bears trailed by one when they started their drive at the 28. Williams threw incomplete twice and then, on third-and-10, scrambled for a 14-yard first down. The Bears used their last timeout, setting up Loveland’s catch-and-run.

“All we have to do is make one play,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “It’s sick to lose like that.”

Flacco, who threw for 305 yards in the second half alone, had one last chance after Loveland’s touchdown. He threw incomplete at his 35, then found Ja’Marr Chase, who ran out of bounds after 13 yards. At the Bengals’ 48 with four seconds left, Flacco was flushed right by a blitzing Jaquan Brisker and chucked a pass that fluttered into Wright’s arms at the 20.

It wasn’t lost on the Bears that, almost exactly a year after the Fail Mary loss, they blitzed the quarterback on the last-second heave. Matt Eberflus didn’t do that to Jayden Daniels.

“We’ve been in those moments before,” defensive tackle Gervon Dexter said. “We didn’t want to be on the wrong end this time.”

They weren’t, though they made enough mistakes to lose against almost any other team.

For once, the Bears were the team that survived the crazy ending.

“I’d rather go in tomorrow with a win and correct what we need to correct,” Wright said, “as opposed to walking out of here with sad faces.”