Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I love when a coach has an opportunity to make an unconventional decision, so I was extra disappointed with Ben Johnson’s error last night.
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In today’s SI:AM:
🏈 McCarthy leads Vikings back
🍑 Cal Raleigh’s “glute force”
⚾ Remembering Davey Johnson
It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish
The first three quarters of Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy’s NFL debut on Monday night against the Bears were something the former top-10 pick will want to forget. The final quarter, though, was something he’ll remember forever.
McCarthy’s first start for Minnesota came a year later than he would have hoped after a knee injury sidelined him for the entirety of his rookie season. That time on the shelf, combined with Sam Darnold’s stunning renaissance, made McCarthy’s long-awaited debut all the more interesting. And as he sputtered through the first 45 minutes of his NFL career, he looked very much like a guy playing his first meaningful football game in 20 months.
Through the first three quarters of the game, McCarthy completed 7-of-12 pass attempts for 56 yards and had one interception. The Minnesota offense had managed only a pitiful 65 total yards on 28 plays (2.3 yards per play). Chicago’s offense wasn’t exactly humming either, but the Bears held a 17–6 lead heading into the final quarter, thanks in large part to McCarthy’s biggest mistake of the night.
Early in the third quarter, on the Vikings’ first possession of the half, McCarthy attempted a pass to Justin Jefferson on an out route, but he failed to account for Chicago defensive back Nahshon Wright lurking in coverage. Wright was able to make an easy interception and had a clear path to the end zone for a 74-yard pick-six. McCarthy’s pass had been so immediately doomed that ESPN announcer Joe Buck yelled “Watch out!” before the ball even touched Wright’s hands.
The pick was the most significant lowlight of McCarthy’s night, but it wasn’t the only evidence of his struggles. On several occasions, he was rushing to get the ball snapped before the play clock expired. In fact, the snap on the play where he threw the pick came a fraction of a second before the clock hit zero. He also took a delay of game penalty on the Vikings’ next possession after the pick, turning a difficult third-and-13 into a helpless third-and-18.
But McCarthy was able to reverse course in the fourth quarter. His first NFL touchdown pass came early in the quarter on a 13-yard bullet to Jefferson that he boldly fired into a tight window. Later, he gave the Vikings the lead on a beautifully arcing pass to running back Aaron Jones. McCarthy made it 21 unanswered points on the Vikings’ next possession with a 14-yard touchdown run on a read option as Minnesota went up 27–17.
“I told him at halftime, ‘You are going to bring us back to win this game,’ and the look in his eye was fantastic,” Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell said. “The best thing is just the belief I felt from the team and unit. Ultimately, that doesn’t get done without him in the second half—two passing touchdowns and the critical rushing touchdown at the end.”
The Bears had a chance to come back, though they were thwarted in part by their rookie coach. Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams led a touchdown drive to cut the deficit to 27–24 with 2:02 left on the clock, setting up a very interesting kickoff. Chicago had only one timeout left, and so it really needed to preserve the two-minute warning if it wanted to get the ball back to its offense with enough time to get in position for a game-tying field goal.
Ben Johnson, the Bears’ first-year head coach, instructed kicker Cairo Santos to kick the ball out of the end zone, hoping to negate the possibility of a return and keep those crucial two seconds on the clock. That’s easier said than done, though, and Santos’s kick merely landed several yards into the end zone. The ESPN cameras captured Minnesota return man Ty Chandler looking over toward O’Connell on the sideline for guidance on whether to take the ball out of the end zone. O’Connell motioned for Chandler to bring the ball out and the return brought the clock down to 1:55, burning the free timeout the Bears needed.
Chicago’s defense did its part, forcing a three-and-out, but with only one timeout at their disposal, the Bears got the ball back with just nine seconds on the clock.
“The intent was for the ball to go out of the end zone,” Johnson said after the game, explaining why he opted not to go for an onside kick. “We felt if we had kicked it out of the end zone and got the three-and-out that we got, we would get the ball back with about 56 seconds.”
But Johnson had a third option, and not taking it highlighted his inexperience as a head coach. The NFL slightly tweaked its kickoff rules this season so that a touchback brings the ball out to the 35-yard line. That’s what Johnson had wanted. But kicking the ball out of bounds results in it being placed at the 40-yard line. Johnson could have instructed Santos to send the kickoff over the sideline, guaranteeing there wouldn’t be a return and preserving the two-minute warning. In that situation, the ability to stop the clock is much more important than five yards. Johnson’s miscalculation cost his team a very valuable 40 seconds that would have drastically altered their final possession. It still would have been difficult to come back and tie the game, but the Bears would have had a much better chance.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- While J.J. McCarthy turned his night around, Caleb Williams and the Bears fell flat late in the game. Those struggles were nothing new for Chicago, Matt Verderame writes.
- Today’s Digital Cover is Stephanie Apstein’s story from the September issue of Sports Illustrated on what Cal Raleigh changed to turn into one of the best hitters in baseball.
- Before you hit the waiver wire in your fantasy football league, check out Michael Fabiano’s recommendations on the best available players to target now.
- In Conor Orr’s NFL Power Rankings, Baltimore tumbles after another rough loss, while the Steelers surge on the heels of Aaron Rodgers’s strong debut.
- Davey Johnson, manager of the title-winning 1986 Mets, has died at 82 after a long illness. Tom Verducci remembers the confident, thick-skinned gunslinger who led with conviction.
- Is NIL shifting college football’s balance of power? Pat Forde explores how the Big Ten’s financial muscle is challenging the SEC’s geographic advantage and perch at the top of the sport.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. A really powerful run by D’Andre Swift to pick up a first down.
4. Caleb Williams’s first career rushing touchdown. Yes, really. How is it possible that Williams, one of the most athletic quarterbacks in the NFL, who rushed for nearly 500 yards last season, never took it into the end zone himself in 17 starts last season?
3. Josh Naylor’s 25th steal of the season. Naylor is one of the slowest players in the majors (ranked in the second percentile in sprint speed) and had 25 steals in his first six MLB seasons combined, but he has been running wild this year.
2. Saniya Rivers’s long three at the first half buzzer to set a new Sun franchise record for threes by a rookie.
1. Josh Bell’s towering 413-foot home run. You have to feel bad for the only two fans who were sitting in the upper deck in Miami but couldn’t go home with a souvenir because Bell hit the ball so hard that it ricocheted right back onto the field.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | J.J. McCarthy’s Rollercoaster Debut Aided by Bears’ Coaching Blunder.