Schwartz: We didn't finish with the football

Detroit wide receiver Calvin Johnson crunched his 6-foot-5, 236-pound frame and sat at his locker stall pulling on his socks, his soft voice devoid of energy.

It was quite the contrast from the Johnson who, with 24 seconds left in Sunday's season opener against the Bears, leapt high in the right corner of Soldier Field's south end zone and, with cornerback Zackary Bowman draped on him, used his large hands to grab a perfectly thrown 25-yard pass from quarterback Shaun Hill.

Johnson fell on his backside, two feet down, ball clutched. He sprung to his feet, sprinted the distance of the end zone and headed toward the visitors bench.

A big man had made a gigantic play.

Detroit 20, Bears 19.

"The first thing that went through my head was, 'We won. We finally beat the Bears at Chicago,' " Johnson said.

Not quite.

A referee overturned the call after seeing the ball pop out of Johnson's right hand when the ball made contact with the ground. Replay officials stood by the call.

Bears 19, Detroit 14.

"That's an incomplete pass. The officials called it incomplete," Detroit coach Jim Schwartz said. "The rule is, if you're going to the ground in the process of making a catch, you need to finish with the football. And we didn't finish with the football."

Schwartz said Johnson knew the rule.

"He's trying to come down with (the football)," Schwartz said. "He had one hand to keep it away from the other guy and he's trying to get his feet down and go to a knee. It wasn't like he was trying to flip (the ball) to the official."

Two incomplete passes into the end zone later, the last throw on fourth-and-10 from the Bears' 25, Johnson spiked his skull cap in an official's direction.

"You just got to move on," Johnson said. "It is what it is. It's over. Can't do nothing about it."

What Schwartz wasn't going to do was pout about the tough break for his team.

"The time that I stand up here and start blaming officials is the time that I don't need to be doing this anymore," Schwartz said. "We had chances to win the game. We had chances to put the game away. We battled our butts off the entire game. But to point at one play like that as the reason we won or lost is not going to be us."