Green Bay Packers<\/a> 31-27 in a wild-card game on Saturday night.<\/p>\nThe NFC North champion Bears (12-6) extended their resurgent first season under coach Ben Johnson with their seventh fourth-quarter comeback victory. They split two down-to-the-wire games with Green Bay in the regular season, and this one turned out to be a thriller when it looked like it would be a breeze for the Packers (9-8-1).<\/p>\n
Chicago trailed 21-3 at halftime and 21-6 through three quarters, only to outscore Green Bay 25-6 in the fourth on the way to its first playoff win in 15 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrue belief,\u201d Williams said. \u201cBelief. That\u2019s all you need. You got belief in the coaches that they\u2019re gonna call the right play at the right time. You got belief in the players on the field that you\u2019re gonna make the right play at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Williams connected with Moore to give the Bears their first lead since it was 3-0, Jordan Love led Green Bay into Chicago territory. But on third down at the 28, he dropped the snap, scrambled and heaved a pass to the end zone with no time left. Jaquan Brisker deflected the ball, setting off a wild celebration \u2013 and a curt handshake between Johnson and Packers coach Matt LaFleur.<\/p>\n
The Bears will host a divisional-round game next weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just keep plugging along,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe keep fighting. We\u2019ve been proving that this year. That\u2019s who we are, that\u2019s what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chicago pulled within 21-16 on D\u2019Andre Swift\u2019s five-yard run early in the fourth quarter. The Packers responded, with rookie Matthew Golden breaking three tackles and leapfrogging a fourth defender on a 23-yard catch-and-run for his first career touchdown, making it 27-16. Brandon McManus missed the extra point wide left.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Bears went 76 yards, with Williams throwing an eight-yard touchdown pass to Olamide Zaccheaus and hitting rookie Colston Loveland for the two-point conversion to make it 27-24 with 4:18 remaining.<\/p>\n
The Packers then drove to the Chicago 21, only to come away with nothing when McManus missed wide right on a 44-yard field goal attempt. The Bears responded with the go-ahead touchdown drive and hung on for their first playoff win since the 2010 team beat Seattle in the divisional round at Soldier Field. They had lost three straight in the postseason, starting with a loss to Aaron Rodgers and the Packers in the NFC championship game that season.<\/p>\n
Green Bay dominated Chicago for years. But the momentum in the NFL\u2019s longest-running rivalry seems to be turning, with the Bears beating the Packers for the third time in the past five games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here and I\u2019m going to be here for a while, is my plan,\u201d Williams said. \u201cBe in a bunch of games, be in these moments and come out victorious. That\u2019s the mindset for right now this year. That\u2019s also the mindset for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bears envisioned nights like this when they drafted Williams No. 1 overall last year, and when they hired Johnson in the offseason. Williams delivered after a shaky start, throwing for 361 yards and the two late touchdowns. He completed 24 of 48 passes and was intercepted twice.<\/p>\n
The Bears\u2019 Caleb Williams celebrates after a Saturday night\u2019s win. Photograph: Erin Hooley\/AP<\/p>\n
Loveland caught eight passes for a career-high 137 yards for the Bears, who had closed the regular season with tight losses to San Francisco and Detroit.<\/p>\n
The Packers dropped their final five games. That certainly was not what they envisioned when they acquired star pass rusher Micah Parsons from Dallas in late August and sent expectations soaring. The two-time All-Pro suffered a season-ending knee injury in a Week 15 loss at Denver, and the defense struggled without him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know we fought through a lot of adversity this year,\u201d coach Matt LaFleur said. \u201cUnfortunately we didn\u2019t do enough to overcome that adversity. That\u2019s all of us collectively. We\u2019ve got to do more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Love threw for 323 yards and four touchdowns after missing the final two regular-season games. He hadn\u2019t played since a helmet-to-helmet hit from Chicago\u2019s Austin Booker in the second quarter of a Week 16 loss at Soldier Field.<\/p>\n
Romeo Doubs, Christian Watson and Jayden Reed each had TD catches in the first half. Ty\u2019Ron Hopper stopped a threat in the third quarter when he intercepted a backpedaling Williams near the goal line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s we don\u2019t have the composure, I think it\u2019s just the situation we put ourselves in,\u201d Love said. \u201cJumping out to a lead and doing what we wanted in the first half and then the second half kind of a completely different story. I think for any team that\u2019s going to be frustrating, and you\u2019ve got to find ways to be able to overcome that and get back to it. I think we did, but it was just a little too late.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caleb Williams dropped back, pump-faked and found DJ Moore wide open down the sideline for the go-ahead touchdown.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-400701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}