INDIANAPOLIS — Despite all of the ugliness, all of the mistakes that had preceded the moment Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium, Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams took a snap with a chance to lead the winning drive with 6 minutes, 52 seconds to play against the Indianapolis Colts.
Six seconds later, Colts defensive end Laiatu Latu swiped the opportunity away.
The 6-foot-5, 265-pound rookie from UCLA burst off the line of scrimmage and barreled around Bears tight end Cole Kmet. Williams said he could feel Latu coming, and he tried to step up in the pocket and make small movements. But he could see wide receiver Rome Odunze about to pop open behind the linebacker and prepared to throw.
With Kmet falling to the ground as he tried to stop it, Latu swatted at the arm of Williams, who fumbled. Colts nose tackle Grover Stewart pounced on the ball at the Bears 16-yard line. Four plays later, Colts running back Jonathan Taylor scored on a 1-yard touchdown run for the deciding play in a 21-16 Colts victory.
Kmet wouldn’t say if he was supposed to be given help to stop Latu — “not necessarily, no,” he said — and instead stepped up to the blame.
“Disappointed in my technique there and just need to be better,” Kmet said.
When Bears coach Matt Eberflus spoke to his players after the game, he delivered a simple message: “Missed opportunities.”
The drive that started and ended with a strip-sack was one of far too many missed opportunities that turned what could have been a breakout Williams performance of 363 passing yards and two touchdowns — but two interceptions — into a second straight road loss.
The Bears scored later in the fourth quarter but ran out of time to stage a comeback.
“We left one out there today,” Eberflus said.
The Bears offensive issues were the primary factor in their returning from Indianapolis 1-2 — from the strip-sack to Williams’ two interceptions to a painful first-half red-zone sequence in which the Bears ran 10 plays inside the 20 and four from the 4 or closer and didn’t score any points.
But a special teams infraction did some big damage in the second half too.
The Bears defense held the Colts to seven points through nearly three quarters, and with 3:40 to play in the third, the unit forced another Colts punt.
But on the fourth-and-2 play, Daniel Hardy, who helped propel the Bears’ lone win over the Tennessee Titans with a blocked punt, committed a neutral zone infraction.
“It was less than 5 (yards), so they tried the old head bob and all that, and they got us on it,” Eberflus said. “So we have to do a better job there.”
A defense that thought it made a stop had to return to the field, and the Colts struck quickly, with Taylor gaining 25 yards on a screen pass and 21 yards on a carry on back-to-back plays. Trey Sermon capped the 80-yard drive with a 1-yard touchdown run for a 14-3 Colts lead.
Bears safety Kevin Byard said the team needs to play better complementary football, with the units building momentum off one another — rather than crushing it.
“If we don’t, we’re just going to be in these dogfights all the time,” Byard said. “We’re a resilient team, but that’s not a formula to winning ball games in the NFL. … We’ve just got to be better complementary as a team.”
The 1-2 Colts have plenty of problems, but they modeled what Byard was talking about in the second quarter. It started when Williams and Odunze sparked the Bears offense with a season-long, 47-yard connection to open a drive.
Later in the drive, Williams tried to hit DeAndre Carter on the left sideline but was out of rhythm with the route. Colts cornerback Jaylon Jones jumped in front of the pass to intercept it.
The Colts offense then built momentum on Anthony Richardson’s 40-yard pass to Kylen Granson. Taylor followed by scoring on a 29-yard touchdown run for the only points of the first half.
“The corner made a great break on the ball, and I didn’t get all of my power into the throw, so that’s why I was a little bit loftier than some of the usual passes when you’re throwing something like that,” Williams said of the first pick. “Got a little pushback and tried to get it to him. Thought the DB was a little too far off, and he made a great break on the ball.”
Jones picked off Williams again in the third quarter on a ball that Odunze said he should have body caught and come down with, but the Bears defense came up with a stop on the ensuing drive.
The Bears also had two interceptions off Richardson — from Tremaine Edwards and Jaylon Johnson — but the offense only got three points from those chances.
“At the end of the day, this is about wins and losses, so it’s not good enough,” Johnson said of the defense. “We’re not where we want to be right now. So it’s not good enough for ourselves, and we left some plays out there. We’ve got to make them.”
Even one of the most exciting Bears offensive plays of the day came with a mistake. Williams and Odunze connected on a 1-yard touchdown pass to cut the Colts’ lead to 14-9 in the fourth quarter. It was the first career touchdown for both, though Odunze said Williams would let him keep the touchdown ball.
But amid the celebration, there was confusion about whether the Bears were going to kick an extra point or go for two, the latter the obvious choice since that would have brought them within a field goal. The Bears had to burn a timeout to get the team on the field for the two-point conversion, which fell incomplete.
They could have used the timeout late in the fourth quarter as they tried to find a way to win.
“It wasn’t as good as it should be in terms of our communication,” Eberflus said. “That’s on the coaches, we have to be better there, from the top to the bottom, from upstairs down to the bottom. We’ve got to do a better job there.”
Despite the Bears’ uncomfortable inability to capitalize in the red zone in the second quarter, offensive players said they felt better Sunday while totaling 395 yards, at least from the low bar they set over the first two weeks of the season.
But they still have to be better at seizing the opportunities.
“It felt like we had more rhythm,” Kmet said. “I thought Caleb played really well, and we were running it well at times. So like, there were some good things offensively we can look at. But this league is about winning football games, and we didn’t get that done today.”
