BALTIMORE — The Bears have claimed all season that quarterback Caleb Williams is at his best when the game is on the line. On Sunday, he had another chance to show it.
With about nine minutes left against a ravenous Ravens team, the Bears took possession at their own 4-yard line, trailing by a field goal.
On the first snap, guard Joe Thuney committed a false start. On the second, running back Kyle Monangai ran for two yards. And on the third, Williams made his worst pass of the season.
Williams stood in his own end zone and stared down wide receiver Rome Odunze, who had cornerback Nate Wiggins guarding him man-to-man with a safety helping over the top. Williams tried to zip the ball to Odunze, but Wiggins jumped in front of him at the 18. He returned the interception to the 9, and the Ravens scored two plays later to seal what would become a 30-16 victory.
Williams’ evaluation of the throw was different than that of head coach Ben Johnson — which was appropriate, given how out-of-sorts the Bears’ offense looked against the worst defense in the league. Williams said it was a good decision poorly executed to throw to Odunze.
‘‘[Wiggins] undercut the route,’’ he said, ‘‘and I could have led [Odunze] farther out in front.’’
Johnson, however, said the ball went to the wrong guy.
‘‘In my mind, there might have been another option we could have gotten to,’’ he said.
Monangai was open in the right flat.
Given the stakes, the mistake was the worst one Williams has made all season. It reminded particularly masochistic Bears fans of Justin Fields throwing a screen-pass pick-six from his own end zone in a loss to the Buccaneers in 2023. Others might have seen shades of the Thanksgiving debacle last season in the Bears’ end-of-game red-zone circus.
‘‘We didn’t execute the plays we needed to at the right moments,’’ Williams said. ‘‘And they did.’’
INTERCEPTION @WigginNathaniel!!!!!
Tune in on CBS! pic.twitter.com/NmguNZ3o4w
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) October 26, 2025
There was no excuse for Williams being more uncomfortable running the Bears’ offense than counterpart Tyler Huntley running that of the Ravens. Huntley was the Ravens’ third-stringer before being promoted when two-time MVP Lamar Jackson was ruled out Saturday with a hamstring injury. Huntley went 17-for-22 for 186 yards with one touchdown for a 116.9 passer rating. He ran eight times for 53 yards.
Williams finished 25-for-38 for 285 yards with the interception for a 77.2 passer rating. Sixty-four of those yards came in garbage time, when a 42-yard pass to wide receiver DJ Moore moved the Bears to the Ravens’ 3.
Williams limped down the field after taking a hit — he said later he was fine — then threw an incompletion followed by a two-yard pass. His sneak on third-and-goal from the 1 was stuffed, and Ravens defenders took so much time rolling off him that they could have stopped for afternoon tea. Johnson later blamed himself for the sneak call.
On fourth-and-goal, Williams threw wildly to a wide-open Moore.
In all, the clock ran from 1:56 when Moore caught his deep ball to 24 seconds after the final incompletion. The series didn’t lose the game for the Bears, but it was emblematic of what went wrong.
After scoring touchdowns on only 30.7% of their trips to the red zone in their previous three games, the Bears preached the importance of better play inside the 20-yard line. They wound up scoring only one touchdown on three trips to the red zone Sunday.
‘‘It’s hurting us as an offense and as a team,’’ Williams said.
The game likely would have evolved differently had the Bears scored more than six points in a first quarter in which they held the ball for all but three plays.
They had first-and-goal from the Ravens’ 6 on their first possession but were forced to settle for a 32-yard field goal by Cairo Santos after Williams was sacked on third down from the 5. They got to the Ravens’ 22 on their next drive before Williams threw back-to-back incompletions, bringing on Santos for a 39-yard field goal.
A two-touchdown lead would have forced the Ravens away from their running game. A home crowd disgusted by a 1-5 start could have turned on them. Instead, the Bears settled for three points twice.
‘‘Six is a lot more than three,’’ rookie tight end Colston Loveland said. ‘‘You could definitely feel that.’’
The Ravens took a 7-6 lead midway through the second quarter. The first of Derrick Henry’s two two-yard scoring runs was the 111th touchdown run of his career, breaking a tie with Bears legend Walter Payton for fifth place in NFL history.
On second-and-four with 57 seconds left in the first half, Williams had room to scramble and took off up the right sideline. Rather than run out of bounds, however, he slid at the Ravens’ 44 after gaining 22 yards. The Bears used their second timeout.
‘‘If you want to talk about managing and things like that . . . I could’ve gotten out of bounds on that long run to save that second timeout,’’ Williams said.
The Bears had to burn their third timeout two plays later, when Williams was flagged for intentional grounding after he fired the ball to the left sideline while being pressured. It was his second intentional-grounding flag of the quarter.
The Bears lost 10 yards and were forced to use their final timeout to prevent a 10-second runoff. They sprinted the kicking unit onto the field two plays later, and Santos left a 58-yard field-goal try short of the crossbar.
‘‘We’ve got to find a way to get in the end zone,’’ Williams said. ‘‘And we’ve got to find a way to stop the bleeding when you start bleeding.’’
