Coach Ben Johnson didn’t know what to tell his players in the locker room Sunday that he hadn’t already said the week before or after one of the Bears’ three other fourth-quarter comebacks.
Wide 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 last four minutes to beat the Giants 24-20 at Soldier Field.
The dramatic has 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, but 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 victory at Lambeau Field last season.
The Giants were a perfect foil — they’re the second team since the 1970 NFL-AFL 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 left 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, he sprinted up the left sideline and 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 touchdown drive earlier in the quarter, inheriting the ball at the Bears’ 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 his shoulders square and diving headfirst 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 wide 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 get a stop, which they did, and then allow us to go back out there and have a game-winning drive.”
CALEB TAKES IT HIMSELF FOR THE LEAD ‼️
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/CwkwRX47P3
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) November 9, 2025
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 Swift for a seven-yard gain before hitting wide receiver Luther Burden III on a fade-stop route down the right sideline for 27 yards. Swift ran for two yards after the two-minute warning, 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 after Jaxson Dart exited with a concussion in the third quarter — to 11 yards on their last drive.
Scrambling was the strength of Williams’ game. He ran on six of his 13 drop-backs in the fourth quarter for 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, however. Williams went 20-for-36 for 220 yards, one touchdown and an 83.1 passer rating. His late-game heroics don’t change the fact that the Bears need him to be more consistent. His receivers dropped six passes, according to 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 QB. Williams acknowledged, too, that there was plenty of room for improvement.
“We know who we are; we know we’re real,” Williams said. “We know that some of the issues we had today — 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 the 2020 season and hasn’t won a playoff game in almost 15 years.
The only way to get there 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.”
