LANDOVER, Md. — His voice cracking at times, cornerback Jaylon Johnson was stunned — just like every other defender in the visitors’ locker room — after being burned by Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels’ improbable 52-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Noah Brown on a Hail Mary on the final play of the Bears’ excruciating 18-15 loss Sunday.
‘‘Pissed off,’’ he said. ‘‘Pissed off.’’
But while many of his teammates struggled to explain what went wrong, Johnson didn’t need to see the film to know there was one egregious breakdown that allowed the play to succeed.
‘‘There should never be somebody wide-open in the back of the end zone,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘We just didn’t execute it well enough. I can’t say . . . who was supposed to be there; I don’t know. But there should never be anybody wide-open in the back of the end zone. We all have to find a way to execute better down the stretch.’’
It will take a lot of time to dissect this one. There were two seconds left, and the Commanders had the ball at their 48-yard line. Victory seemed so assured that effusive cornerback Tyrique Stevenson — surely feeling the final play was a fait accompli, as it usually is — was gesturing toward fans and raising his arms, with his back turned toward the line of scrimmage as the ball was being snapped.
Stevenson quickly turned back to defend the play. Daniels evaded the Bears’ rush and scrambled from the left side of the field to his right. He turned his body and unleashed a towering pass toward a scrum of players, including Bears defenders Elijah Hicks, Kevin Byard, Jaylon Jones and Stevenson, inside the 5-yard line.
Stevenson made his way to the front of the pile and appeared to tip the ball, which bounded over the scrum to an open Brown in the end zone. From start to finish, the play took 17 seconds. Delirium erupted on one side, devastation on the other.
Stevenson, who had a tough day, said he would talk Monday. But he apologized for his performance on X.
‘‘To Chicago and teammates my apologies for lack of awareness and focus,’’ he wrote. ‘‘The game ain’t over until zeros hit the clock. Can’t take anything for granted. Notes taken, improvement will happen.’’
Whether anyone talked or not, the prevailing emotion of disappointment and frustration was thick in the locker room.
‘‘Right now, it’s kind of a blur,’’ Hicks said. ‘‘I’m gonna need to watch it. . . . But just from what I remember, it felt like that play [took] all day. That play took forever. I don’t know how long — 17 seconds? That’s crazy.’’
The Bears practice the Hail Mary play, like all NFL teams do. In the moment, however, it’s always more chaotic.
‘‘On a Hail Mary, anything can happen,’’ Byard said. ‘‘You could talk about the details and what everybody’s supposed to do. Obviously, the quarterback had a long time to scramble back there.
‘‘In that scenario, I’m supposed to be the jumper to try and jump and tip the ball down. But just standing back there and everybody kind of piling up, it’s hard to get that angle, hard to get a running start. By the time the ball’s in the air, you’re trying to fight for position, and the ball got tipped in the air. Their back guy ended up just making a play. Probably didn’t execute it the way we needed to.’’
The final-play breakdown was a cruel twist for the Bears’ defense, which gave them a chance to steal the game by holding the Commanders without a touchdown until that fateful play.
So when running back Roschon Johnson scored on a one-yard run and the Bears added a two-point conversion with 25 seconds left, all the defense needed to do was prevent a miracle. After their yeoman’s work in bending but not breaking, the impossible somehow happened.
Daniels completed passes of 11 yards to tight end Zach Ertz and 13 yards to wide receiver Terry McLaurin to give the Commanders a first down at the 48. That’s when all Hail broke loose.
Allowing Daniels to get in striking distance didn’t help, and the Bears’ had many other issues that led to their demise. But it was still the Hail Mary that beat them.
‘‘It all comes down to that play, executing in that time,’’ Jaylon Johnson said. ‘‘We can go back and say there was plenty of times where we could have won the game. But no other play had more intensity and more on the line than that one.’’
In the end, that was the bottom line for most of the Bears’ defenders. Linebacker T.J. Edwards was caught in no-man’s land in the middle of the field — neither rushing Daniels, nor defending the pass. He spoke for several when he was asked whether he was the ‘‘spy’’ on Daniels on that play.
‘‘In a way,’’ he said. ‘‘I gotta go back and watch it and see what we could have done differently. You know, it’s a [bleepin’] Hail Mary. I don’t know.’’