In his first game as head coach, Chicago\u2019s Ben Johnson made a costly error by allowing the Vikings to burn the two-minute warning on a kickoff return as the Bears desperately needed to stop the clock and get the ball back.<\/p>\n
The Bears scored a touchdown with 2:02 remaining in the fourth quarter, cutting the Vikings\u2019 lead to 27-24. At that point, the smart options were either to onside kick, or to kick the ball out of bounds to ensure that no time would run off the clock on the kickoff and that the Vikings\u2019 next offensive play would immediately be followed by the clock stopping for the two-minute warning. The Bears chose neither smart option.<\/p>\n
Instead, Johnson called for his kicker to boot the ball deep, hoping for a touchback. But the Vikings smartly ran the ball out of the end zone, taking more than two seconds off the clock and burning the two-minute warning before their offensive possession started.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intent was for the ball to go out of the end zone,\u201d Johnson said after the game.<\/p>\n
That may have been the intent, but it\u2019s not realistic to assume your kicker is going to be able to kick it so far that the opposing team has no chance to return it. Every NFL kicker can reliably kick off out of bounds, however, and that\u2019s what the Bears should have done if they weren\u2019t going to onside kick. Touchbacks get placed at the 35-yard line while kickoffs out of bounds go to the 40-yard line, so the Vikings only would have gained five additional yards of field position with a kickoff out of bounds. Five yards doesn\u2019t mean much at that point in the game, but losing the two-minute warning meant the difference between a realistic chance to get the ball back and drive down the field, and losing the game.<\/p>\n
Asked if he considered an onside kick, Johnson answered, \u201cYeah. We felt like if we had kicked it out of the end zone and gotten the three-and-out that we got, we\u2019d get the ball back with around 56 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, the Bears\u2019 final offensive possession started at their own 20-yard line with nine seconds remaining. They never got remotely close to field goal range before the game was over. By allowing the Vikings to run back the kick and run off the two-minute warning, Johnson cost his team any realistic hope of a comeback.<\/p>\n
This might all sound like 20\/20 hindsight, but it isn\u2019t: The instant the Bears scored the touchdown to cut the score to 27-23 with 2:02 left, before the Bears even lined up for the extra point, Peyton Manning was already pointing out on the ManningCast that the Bears couldn\u2019t afford to lose the two-minute warning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the onside kick,\u201d Manning said, before noting the risk of kicking the ball into the end zone would be the Vikings running it out and taking the two seconds off the clock to burn the two-minute warning.<\/p>\n
Manning was confident that Vikings head coach Kevin O\u2019Connell would understand the importance of using up the two-minute warning on special teams, rather than offense, because O\u2019Connell had told him before the game that he and his team had worked on late-game strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin O\u2019Connell said they spent a ton of time on situational football,\u201d Manning said after the Bears\u2019 touchdown. \u201cThis should be good situational football for both sides right here. The kick return team for Minnesota has got to run it out, and if they onside kick, Minnesota\u2019s got to find a way to make it take two seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manning said the Bears needed to kick the ball out of bounds rather than risk a kickoff return, noting that the field position difference would be minuscule.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could kick it out of bounds, it goes on the 40, that\u2019s like an onside kick anyway that you didn\u2019t recover,\u201d Manning said.<\/p>\n
Once the Bears declared that they were kicking off rather than onside kicking, Manning immediately noted that the potential to gain five yards with a touchback rather than kicking out of bounds wasn\u2019t worth the risk that the ball would be returned out of the end zone, burning the two-minute warning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re kicking off. I\u2019d kick it out of bounds,\u201d Manning said as the Bears\u2019 kickoff team lined up.<\/p>\n
After the Bears\u2019 kickoff was returned out of the end zone by the Vikings, Manning reiterated what a mistake that was by the Bears.<\/p>\n
\u201cKick it out of bounds. Take the penalty, it\u2019s on the 40 . . . now you\u2019ve got the timeout and the two-minute warning,\u201d Manning said. \u201cOut of bounds. Not out of the end zone, out of bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Bears\u2019 defense forced a three-and-out with time running down, Manning noted how much better off the Bears would have been if the two-minute warning had stoped the clock after the Vikings\u2019 first offensive play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would have had a lot of time,\u201d Manning said. \u201cThe defense did their job and stopped it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manning said he could have told the Bears what to do if they\u2019d asked him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t know if I have time to be the Bears\u2019 analytics guy and do this show,\u201d Manning joked.<\/p>\n
Johnson needs to listen to an analytics guy who understands these late-game situations. He botched his final decision on Monday night, and cost his team any realistic chance of getting the ball back with enough time to score.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his first game as head coach, Chicago\u2019s Ben Johnson made a costly error by allowing the Vikings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-130026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}