Bears survive Caleb Williams' 4 interceptions to beat Buccaneers 27-24 on Cairo Santos' late field goal

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times SHARE COPY LINK Share CLOSE Twitter Facebook Bluesky Email Reddit Flipboard Going into this season, it would’ve been hard to envision a scenario in which quarterback Caleb Williams was a wreck and the Bears got bailed out by their defense. That bizarre combination was exactly how they survived the Buccaneers on Sunday. The Bears held on for a 27-24 win going into their bye week despite Williams throwing a career-high four interceptions thanks to stellar run defense and timely takeaways against a Bucs team that wasn’t in their weight class. It was the first time they won a game in which their quarterback threw four interceptions since 2010. They escaped on Cairo Santos’ 38-yard field as time expired, ending an unnecessarily hectic and exhausting night that rattled their stature as perhaps the best team in the NFL. Coach Ben Johnson was irritated and terse afterward, and that sour mood trickled through the offense. “We’ve got a resilient team to weather the storm,” wide receiver Rome Odunze said. “It was really ugly the way we did it, but we got the win. “It could’ve [been a blowout]. It definitely could’ve been a bigger game for us on offense. The defense stuck it out for us and held it together.” Williams had never thrown more than two picks in a game, and the last time he even did that was in the first month of his rookie season. His brutal game Sunday followed the best three-game stretch of his career, making it even more surprising. He finished 22-of-37 passing for 279 yards with two touchdown passes and four picks for a 61.5 passer rating. There was never any hesitation, though, and he got the Bears in field-goal range with a 38-yard pass to tight end Colston Loveland with 40 seconds left. “I’m going to throw until I can’t throw anymore,” Williams said. “That’s how I live.” Williams recounted games from high school and college in which he threw three interceptions, but didn’t think he won any of those. He described his first interception as “greedy,” said the Bucs pressured him into bad decisions on the next two and on the final one late in the third quarter, the ball got “popped in the air” by a defender. The Bucs threatened to take the lead late in the third quarter when Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson gave the team some breathing room with a pick-six. Johnson darted in front of tight end Cade Otton in scoring range to intercept the pass from Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield and take it 67 yards for his second career touchdown and a 24-13 lead. Nonetheless, the Bears kept giving them chances. With under four minutes left and looking to run the clock out for a win, wide receiver Luther Burden caught a screen pass deep in the Bears’ end of the field and fumbled it away when he got hit in the head. The Bucs took over at the Bears’ 17-yard line and scored on Bucky Irving’s six-yard touchdown run, then Mayfield tied it at 24 on a scramble for the two-point conversion with 2:51 remaining to set up Santos’ dramatic kick at the end. As Odunze implied, it never should’ve come down to that. The Bears jumped on the Bucs immediately with touchdowns on their first two possessions before Williams got off track. He appeared to cap the first one with a touchdown pass to Odunze in the back of the end zone, but Odunze bobbled it as he fell out of bounds and it was ruled incomplete. Two plays later, though, he found Odunze again, this time for a nine-yard touchdown pass. The second scoring drive was all Burden. Williams hit him across the middle four yards past the line of scrimmage, and Burden broke three tackles on his way to a 56-yard touchdown. Williams spiraled after that, though, and threw three interceptions in the next four possessions. All were costly. The Bears squandered a red-zone trip when Williams threw to Odunze in the end zone, and safety Tykee Smith cut across and picked the pass off at the 3-yard line to shut down the threat. The play before that interception was dumbfounding. At the end of running back D’Andre Swift’s two-yard run to the Bucs’ 6-yard line, Bears rookie wide receiver Zavion Thomas got into it with cornerback Jacob Parrish and hit him in the facemask — an automatic flag. That penalty sent the Bears back to second-and-goal from the 21-yard line. Ben Johnson benched Thomas from offense the rest of the night and had nothing to say publicly other than reiterating that fact. After the Bears’ defense followed by stuffing Mayfield on a fourth-down quarterback sneak, Williams got the ball at the Bucs’ 35-yard line and threw another interception on the very next play. He closed the half by throwing one from deep in his own territory, immediately after Bears safety Cam Lewis had kept points off the board by intercepting a pass from Mayfield, and that gave the Bucs a chance to steal a field goal just before halftime. Instead of leading by 20 or more at the half, the Bears went to the locker room up 17-6 with the Bucs getting the ball to start the third quarter. They opened the second half with a touchdown drive to cut the Bears’ lead to 17-13, and from then on the game was very much in question. “We’re very grateful we stayed in it and found a way to win that thing,” Ben Johnson said. “Despite the displeasure I might be presenting right now, there’s a lot of good in terms of building this team that comes from a win like this.” SHARE COPY LINK Share CLOSE Twitter Facebook Bluesky Email Reddit Flipboard Jason Lieser Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Bears reporter Next Up In Chicago Bears Bears' grades are in. How did they do against the Buccaneers? Bears CB Kyler Gordon leaves game with injury, returns Bears-Bucs notes: Mike Tirico sits out with health issue Bears can't win sizzling NFC North unless they do their own dirty work and beat their rivals themselves Dancing Ben Johnson shows Bears players 'he’s just one of us' Bears' next opponent: Saints stop 2-point conversion in OT to beat Browns 23-22