There were myriad reasons the Chicago Bears blew an 11-point, fourth-quarter lead at home to the visiting Minnesota Vikings in Week 1 of the NFL season, and head coach Ben Johnson is responsible for at least two of them.
Kicker Cairo Santos is the goat on Tuesday, September 9, and not the good kind like Tom Brady or Michael Jordan. Chicago fans began calling for Santos’ exit from the roster after he missed a 50-yard field goal in the third quarter and failed to boot a kickoff through the end zone after the Bears pulled within three points (27-24) with two minutes and two seconds remaining in the game. His kickoff fell roughly two or three yards short of where it needed to end up.
Chicago had only one timeout remaining, and Santos’ kick allowed Vikings return man Ty Chandler to bring the ball out of the end zone and run enough time off of the clock on the return that the Bears lost what would have been a free timeout at the two-minute warning.
Johnson didn’t explicitly throw Santos under the bus when discussing the sequence after the contest, but assigned a measure of blame to the kicker simply by explaining the team’s late-game plans.
“Yeah, the intent was for the ball to go out of the end zone,” Johnson said. “We felt like if we had kicked it out of the end zone and gotten the three-and-out we got, we get the ball back with around 56 seconds.”
But Johnson made two critical game-management errors down the stretch that put the Bears in the unfavorable position in which they found themselves late in the fourth quarter, which ultimately led to a loss that probably should have been a victory in his first game as a head coach.
Ben Johnson Blew Timeout on Bad Challenge in 2nd Half
GettyChicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk quoted former NFL quarterback and alternative “Monday Night Football” broadcaster Peyton Manning in his explanation of the two crucial mistakes that Johnson made.
“The Bears scored with 2:02 on the clock, and the Bears had one timeout because they wasted one on a challenge they shouldn’t have activated,” Florio said. “So they only had one left.”
The play in question was a completed pass from Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy to tight end T.J. Hockenson. Hockenson’s knee hit the ground after the completion, and then Bears defenders made contact with him, which rendered Hockenson down and signaled the end of the play.
However, the defense then knocked the football out of Hockenson’s hands well after the play was dead, which is fairly evident from the video. However, Johnson chose to challenge the call anyway, and that decision cost Chicago a timeout.
Ben Johnson Could Have Avoided Kicking Gaffe by Directing Cairo Santos to Take Onside Kick, Boot Ball Out of Bounds
GettyChicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos.
The second mistake Johnson made concerned his choice to have Santos attempt to boot the ball through the back of the end zone.
Santos doesn’t have a huge leg, so anyone watching the game with knowledge of the kicker’s strengths and weaknesses knew that asking him to punch the ball 76 yards in the air off the kickoff tee was asking a lot.
Johnson had two other options: either try an onside kick or simply direct Santos to purposely boot the ball out of play via one sideline or the other.
“You do an onside kick and … if you recover it, it doesn’t matter, you don’t need that two-minute warning. But if the Vikings recover it, it’s still 2:02 [on the clock],” Florio said. “Manning made the great point … where does the ball go if Ty Chandler takes a knee or if the ball goes out of the end zone? It goes to the [35-yard line]. Where does the ball go if you just kick it out of bounds deliberately? It goes to the [40-yard line]. Those five yards mean nothing. … The two seconds mean everything. That was a critical late-game management flaw in Ben Johnson’s first game.”
Caleb Williams Missed Easy TD to D.J. Moore That Would Have Negated Need for Cairo Santos to Kick Touchback
GettyChicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
It is also fair to note that if a team employs a kicker who can’t kick the football out of the end zone on command, that organization may need to consider whether it has the right man for the job.
Santos still has three years remaining on a four-year, $15.6 million contract he inked in December 2023.
It’s also fair to mention that Bears QB Caleb Williams missed a wide open D.J. Moore on a blown coverage with more than two and a half minutes remaining in the game.
Had Williams hit Moore instead of overthrowing him, Chicago would have scored a touchdown approximately 30 seconds earlier than it did, and Santos’ kickoff wouldn’t have mattered.
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