How did the Bears win a game they usually lose?

Posted October 14, 2025 4:27 pm

By Jon Greenberg

As the cliché goes, it’s hard to win a game in the NFL. However, as we know, it’s even harder, it seems, if you’re the Chicago Bears.

So that’s why Monday night’s 25-24 win over the Washington Commanders is worth celebrating. Take the day off, you have my permission. And if you have to go into the office, stop for a doughnut, get an extra shot in your coffee and take a minute to stop and smell the fall leaves — if not the roses.

Because when the Bears looked doomed for another deflating loss and another day-after of miserable Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking, fate seemed to smile on the oft-woebegone franchise.

It was as if Mother Nature had on a Walter Payton jersey. On a rainy night in Landover, Md., a wet ball slipped out of Jayden Daniels’ hands on a handoff and suddenly the sun was shining on the Bears.

Chicago cornerback Nahshon Wright fell on the ball, and the Bears were back in business with just over 3 minutes to go and the ball on their 44-yard line.

When asked what he was thinking at that moment, Caleb Williams said, “Time to go win the game and not give the ball back to them again. We’ve seen they can be explosive in those moments.”

Yes, we all remember what happened last season.

This time, D’Andre Swift, who carried the Bears on his back most of the night, got them close enough for interim kicker Jake Moody to boot a game winner from 38 yards as time expired.

Somehow, for the second week in a row, the Bears won a game by this weird score. And somehow, they’re over .500 for the first time since, well, the last time they played at Northwest Stadium.

This was a franchise-redemption victory over the Commanders at the site of last year’s season-changing, organization-shifting defeat, and maybe it was an exorcism too.

Ben Johnson wasn’t here last year, as he occasionally has to remind us, but he’s smart enough to know about the football sins of the past. That’s how he got this job and that paycheck with all those zeros.

Now that this game is over, we can all move on. The Bears beat their old coach, Matt Eberflus, two games ago, and now they’ve won at this cursed stadium in the middle of nowhere. The past has been dealt with. The ghosts have dissipated.

“It says a lot about our locker room right now,” Johnson said after the game. “They’re not just believing, but now they’re starting to understand that, man, if this thing’s close in the fourth quarter, then someone’s going to step up and make a play for us.

Last season’s loss via Daniels’ Hail Mary set off a downward spiral that led to the first in-season firings of an offensive coordinator and a head coach in Bears history, and to a 10-game losing streak. It wasn’t just that the Bears lost on a fluke play; it was also the breakdowns that led to it, namely late-game brain malfunctions by both cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and Eberflus.

For the Commanders, it catapulted Daniels into a new level of fame and helped send them to the NFC Championship. Daniels’ and Washington’s success made Williams and the Bears look inferior by comparison.

For the Bears, the silver lining from that loss was that it served as the catalyst for the kind of positive change that we’re possibly seeing right now under Johnson.

Williams grew up not far from the Commanders’ stadium and went to high school in Washington, D.C. Both this year and last, he had friends and family at the stadium. This game only counts as one win, and last season’s was just one loss, but the gap between the two is a chasm.

Williams was 17 for 29 for 252 yards. He threw for a touchdown, tossing a pass to Swift that he took 55 yards for a touchdown to get the Bears back in the game early in the fourth quarter. Swift ran for 108 yards and added 67 yards receiving. As a team, the Bears ran for 145 yards and averaged 5.4 yards per carry.

More than anything else, their success running the ball is the most significant positive to take from the game. Swift found creases and showed explosiveness, but the offensive line and receivers helped him out with their blocking.

Of course, there are still concerns. For one, the Bears had nine penalties totaling 84 yards, and the Commanders scored four first downs on those penalties. Yes, some of the calls didn’t go the Bears’ way, especially that shaky illegal formation call on left tackle Theo Benedet that turned a touchdown into a field goal. However, most of them were due to sloppiness. Williams made some questionable decisions as well, but the Bears steered clear of turnovers.

In fact, they won the takeaway battle 3-0. The Bears turned two first-quarter takeaways into 10 points and led 13-0 after their first three possessions. However, their failure to tack on points gave Washington the opening to take the lead in their second possession of the third quarter on a 33-yard touchdown pass from Daniels to wide-open Luke McCaffrey.

The Bears followed with an attempted field goal that was blocked, and by giving up another touchdown, a familiar turn of events that usually leads to hand-wringing and sleepless nights.

However, Swift’s touchdown got them to within two points (a two-point conversion failed), and after trading punts, Daniels’ fumble opened the door for an unlikely Bears victory that still doesn’t seem quite real.

This was a game the Bears usually lose, but they didn’t.

“I think,” Johnson said, “these wins can do more for a program than blowouts.”

We’ll see. For now, it just counts as a win, and that’s enough.