Caleb Williams rallies Bears’ again in 24-20 win vs. Giants

Ben Johnson didn’t know what to tell his locker room Sunday that he hadn’t already said the week before — or after one of the Bears’ three other fourth-quarter comebacks this season.

Receiver DJ Moore couldn’t figure what to make of it, either, minutes after quarterback Caleb Williams rallied the Bears to two touchdowns in the final four minutes to beat the Giants 24-20 at Soldier Field.

The dramatic has now become commonplace.

“If it’s like this every week, we’re all going to take some years off our life,” Moore said. “But we’re gonna be good.”

The Bears are 6-3, though time, and a much tougher second-half schedule, will tell if they’re good. There’s no doubting that Williams qualifies as elite in the final few minutes, even as he continues to struggle — and frustratingly so — earlier in games.

Williams has led four fourth-quarter comebacks this season — tied for the most in the NFL — and has five in his last 10 games, including the Week 18 win at Lambeau Field last year.

The Giants were a perfect foil Sunday — they’re now the second team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to blow multiple games in which they’ve been ahead by at least 10 with four minutes to play.

Williams’ Superman act was mostly earthbound. The Bears trailed by three with 1:54 to play when Williams took the snap from under center, faked a handoff right to D’Andre Swift and ran a naked bootleg left. Tight end Cole Kmet was open in the flat, but Williams saw the Giants were playing man coverage. Figuring no defender was accounting for him, sprinted up the left sideline. He wasn’t touched until linebacker Brian Burns grazed him at the 1-yard line on his way to a 17-yard touchdown.

“It doesn’t matter the deficit we’re at, it doesn’t matter how much we’re up, it doesn’t matter what happened throughout the game,” Williams said. “We can come through as a team, and that’s what we did.”

Williams used his legs on a more improbable scoring drive earlier in the quarter, inheriting the ball at his own 9, down by 10, with about six minutes to play. The Bears had driven to the Giants’ 31 when Williams dropped back to pass and eventually sprinted up the same left sideline. He drifted toward the Giants bench before deciding not to run out of bounds near the 18, turning shoulders square and diving down head-first at the 2. Williams hustled to the line of scrimmage, out of breath, and called a play that ended in a two-yard touchdown catch by receiver Rome Odunze.

“It didn’t matter how tired, how fresh [I was], any of that,” Williams said. “It was: Score, be able to get the defense back on the field and have them go get a stop, which they did, and then allow us to go back out there and have a game-winning drive.”

The Bears forced a three-and-out, Giants punter Jamie Gillan shanked a punt 26 yards, and Williams drove to take the lead. With the ball at the Bears’ 47, Williams handed off to D’Andre Swift for a seven-yard gain before hitting receiver Luther Burden on a fade-stop route down the right sideline for 27 yards. Swift ran for two yards after the two-minute warning, and then Williams scrambled for the touchdown.

“I can’t explain it,” Burden said. “When we get close, watch out.”

The Bears’ defense held the Giants — and backup quarterback Russell Wilson, who was in the game because after Jaxson Dart was concussed in the third quarter — to a mere 11 yards on their final drive.

Scrambling was the strength of Williams’ game Sunday. He ran on six of his 13 dropbacks in the fourth quarter, totaling a career-high 64 yards.

“He looks like a Houdini back there in the backfield,” Johnson said.

That’s not a long-term solution to the most critical question in American sports, though. Williams went 20-for-36 for 220 yards, one touchdown and an 83.1 passer rating Sunday. His late-game heroics don’t change the fact that the Bears need him to be more consistent. His receivers dropped six passes, per Pro Football Focus, the most of any team in any game this year. On other plays, though, Williams didn’t give them a chance.

In the locker room, Johnson presented Williams with a game ball but was quick to say that things would only get better for his second-year quarterback. Williams acknowledged, too, that there was plenty of room to improve.

“We know who we are — we know we’re real,” Williams said. “We know that some of the issues we had today were just – may have been a drop here … and those are frustrating moments, but … those moments happen. You don’t waver, you don’t lose confidence. You stay right where you are.”

Were the season to end today, they’d be in the playoffs. That’s foreign territory for a franchise that hasn’t been to the postseason since 2020 and hasn’t won a playoff game in almost 15 years.

The only way to get there, though, is for Williams to start playing every drive like it’s one of the game’s last.

“I look at games in the past that we’ve lost since I’ve been here,” Kmet said. “A lot of these we woulda dropped, but now we’re finding ways to win.”