Bears Collapse at Game's End Again

WATCH LIONS AND BEARS HIGHLIGHTS: Bears dominate all but the final four minutes and surrender 26-14 lead in losing 31-26.

When the clock ticked off the last miserable seconds Sunday of the most frustrating loss in a season loaded with them, the Bears could look at any number of plays as the difference in their 31-26 defeat by the Detroit Lions.

What they couldn't do was blame Justin Fields for yet another close defeat.

"It hurts, it hurts a lot," Fields said. "I think we've just got to take the positives out of it and just learn from the loss."

The positives included consistent play from Fields, who didn't throw an interception, and ran for 104 yards while completed 15 of 23 for 169 yards with a 39-yard TD in the third quarter to DJ Moore.

They had the ball for 40 minutes and 24 seconds to 19:36, won the turnover battle 4-1, outrushed Detroit 185 yards to 115 and led 26-14 with 4:12 remaining after the fourth Cairo Santos field goal concluded a perfect 14-play drive consuming 8:45.

Somehow they lost.

Their defense caved in during a game they had dominated and they managed to give up 17 points in the last three minutes.

"They just went down the field too fast," Eberflus said.

Suddenly Lions receivers who had been unable to do anything were catching passes, breaking tackles and running out of bounds to stop the clock.

"Really, the philosophy is you're playing your two-minute defense," Eberflus said. "Which, you're mixing your coverages which we did. We're throwing-in pressures there as well.

"The big thing you've got to do in that moment is tackle them when you get them in bounds so you're forcing them to use their timeouts and you're doing a good job with that."

Fields put it a little more succinctly.

"It's about finishing," he said.

The Lions did. They went 75 yards in six plays to a 32-yard TD pass by Jared Goff to Jameson Williams, and then 73 yards in 11 plays to David Montgomery's go-ahead 1-yard run with a Bears three-and-out sandwiched between.

The TD to Williams proved particularly troublesome because it meant the Bears couldn't force the Lions into using timeouts or burning up time.

"We've just got to do a better job of staying back," Eberlfus said of the TD pass to Jameson.

The Lions were so efficient moving it against the Bears then that they left 29 seconds for the Bears to stage a miracle comeback with a tying field goal, following a two-point conversion pass to Sam LaPorta.

Instead, Fields took the blindside hit by Aidan Hutchinson, fumbled and Darnell Wright kicked it out of the back of the end zone for the safety.

"Being able to lock in on those plays where we need to make those big plays happen, I think that's the next step us, the next step that we've got to get to," Fields said.

In the end, a picture-perfect opening 75-yard drive to D'Onta Foreman's 1-yard TD run, and Santos field goals of 40, 53 and 31 yards were wasted, just like the opportunities they had for points in the first half after interceptions by Tyrique Stevenson and T.J. Edwards s two interceptions Jaylon Johnson had in hand but dropped.

It was like watching the end of the Broncos loss all over again, except the Bears squandered everything at the end of the game rather than in the third and fourth quarter. 

The ball landing just beyond Tyler Scott's fingers on a deep third-down pass thrown by Fields when they needed a first down to kill the clock seemed appropriate. The first winning streak under Eberflus was just out of the Bears' reach.

"It's tough man, it's tough, we've just got to find a way," tight end Cole Kmet told reporters.

They found the right way to victory Sunday.

They just chose another path.

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