‘It was torture’: How the Bears made a statement with their 19-play touchdown drive

Nineteen plays. The Bears offense stayed on the field for 19 plays. They took 9:54 off the clock while nearly 15 minutes elapsed.

“Torture,” wide receiver DJ Moore said. “It’s a long time. Nineteen plays? And I didn’t even come off the field for none of it. So it was torture.”

Of course, it wasn’t actually torture, Moore clarified. He was tired, but so were the Dallas Cowboys. Nineteen plays. Eleven consecutive runs called in the middle, with five ball carriers. No play went for more than 12 yards. It ended with a Caleb Williams-to-Moore touchdown to put the Bears up by 17 points as the third quarter came to an end.

“That was probably my longest drive I’ve ever had,” Williams said. “Maybe 20 may be my longest, but it was tiring. I was hoping he would call a pass play so we could try and go score and end the drive. But we ended up running the ball well, getting that going, and obviously being able to find a strike right there and score. So it was awesome.”

Neither team scored again in the Bears’ 31-14 win. The Bears imposed their will, had the clock and scoreboard completely on their side and put together a drive they can point to down the line.

“You want your identity for any team to be physical and be able to run the ball at will,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “And I thought we did that on that drive.”

Seven points by a thousand little runs.

“They were tired,” Moore said. “So you could see it when we started getting closer and closer to the red zone. You could see they were wearing down.”

The ultimate statement drive punctuated by the ultimate statement touchdown from a head coach who wanted to leave no doubt in getting his first win.

When it was fourth-and-goal from the 4-yard line, Ben Johnson said to go for it. His players were among the least surprised in the stadium.

“As soon as I saw, I think it was, what, fourth-and-4, I was like, I don’t even think I … looked over to the sideline,” guard Jonah Jackson said.

Johnson has established in his short time as head coach that this is who he is.

“You know he’s gonna go for it because after camp and just the first two games, you could see where he’s going with it,” Moore said.

Tight end Durham Smythe, getting more time on Sunday after Colston Loveland left with a hip injury, was on the field for 11 of the 19 plays. One of the few players on the roster who has played for Johnson before (with the Miami Dolphins), he was sure the field goal unit would not take the field.

“No, no, no. Not a chance,” he said.

The Bears put together their longest drive by plays since 2009, when a 19-play drive against the Baltimore Ravens stalled on fourth down from the 1-yard line. According to Stathead, it’s their longest drive (by time elapsed) ending in a touchdown since at least 2001, when Stathead began tracking drives.

Wide receiver Rome Odunze, out there for 18 of the 19 plays, said he hadn’t been a part of a drive that long since he was a kid.

“I don’t believe so at all. Ever. In my career, probably. Since Little League,” he said. “That was awesome. That was a gritty, gritty drive, so it was great to be able to knock some time off the clock and punch it in.”

Smythe went to Kmet on the sideline and told him that in his eight seasons, he had never been on the field for a drive that kept going like this one — the offense converted three third downs to stay on the field.

“Nineteen plays is crazy,” he said, “and that’s honestly a huge turn of the game when you can do that and eat up that much clock in the second half.”

After play No. 16, an 8-yard loss by rookie running back Kyle Monangai, Cowboys defensive tackle Kenny Clark went down with an injury. No one is rooting for anyone to get hurt, but the Bears weren’t complaining about a quick break.

“It just felt good, being able to trot down the field and capitalize on our opportunities,” Jackson said. “We get tired, too. That timeout was kind of nice.”

The loss of yardage set up a second-and-15, the type of down-and-distance scenario that has been an issue this season. Williams threw it to Monangai for 4 yards, then Luther Burden III for a 7-yard gain, setting up fourth-and-goal.

As the clock wound to the end of the third quarter, Williams looked to his left, then back to the middle and scrambled to open space. He kept his eyes up, jumped and threw a strike to a wide-open Moore in the back of the end zone.

The nineteenth play.

“His eyes were still up, and I just was standing in the zone that I was open and just hoping that he saw me while he was scrambling,” Moore said.

After what happened in Week 1, no lead could be considered safe, but going up 17 points like that? You could feel it. It’s who the Bears want to be.

Easier said than done, but they did it Sunday to get their first win.

“It’s an identity thing,” Smythe said. “You want to be able to establish that when they know you’re running the ball, still be able to do it. And obviously, there’s still things we can get better at in that regard, but it is an identity builder when you can do it when they know you’re doing it.”

Swift fought for hard yards to move the sticks on a pair of third-and-1 runs. Johnson mixed things up with a Williams keeper and an end-around to Burden. Nothing was explosive, but it drained the clock, fatigued the Cowboys and put the game out of reach.

“I mean the 19-play drive, you know, that’s going to bring the dog out of everybody,” Odunze said. “So, for us to be able to go put those 19 plays out there and then touch the paint, that tells me we got the right guys in here and we got that dog mentality, so we’ll continue to put that forward. But we adapt to any situation that we’re in, and that situation we needed a 19-play drive.”

In Week 1, the Bears had a 12-play drive at the end of the third quarter with an 11-point lead. That one had eight run plays called, but the offense went backward after multiple penalties, and then Cairo Santos missed a field goal to start the fourth quarter. The Minnesota Vikings scored 21 unanswered points, a gut-punch of a season-opening loss.

Thirteen days and a lot of consternation later, it was a similar situation. No penalties this time. No empty possessions. Just a long, torturous touchdown drive.

“Those drives, when you’re able to capitalize,” Jackson said, “there’s nothing like that feeling coming off (the field) having 7 points.”

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