Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron defended his ill-fated decision to hand the ball off to center Doug Kramer on a critical third-and-one play from the Commanders 1-yard line in the fourth quarter Sunday with the Bears trailing 12-7 in an eventual 18-15 loss.
Quarterback Caleb Williams and Kramer misconnected on the handoff and the Commanders recovered the ensuing fumble. But Waldron said he would make the same call if he had it to do over.
“Every play call that doesn’t work out, you go back and look at it and see, ‘Was it the best call in that situation?’” Waldron said “What could I have done better as a play-caller? What situations could I have put those guys in?’
“But going back to the play, I have all the confidence in the world in our players. It’s something we’ve repped and worked on. It came up in the moment, as a third-and-one call. It didn’t work out.”
Waldron said he was proud of the defense for responding with a three-and-out, and the offense for responding to that with a touchdown drive that finally gave the Bears a 15-12 lead with 23 seconds to play.
That actually should have worked out in the Bears’ favor, had they not allowed Jayden Daniels to throw a 52-yard touchdown pass to Noah Brown on a Hail Mary pass. But still, the play-call was criticized for tempting fate in a critical moment by handing off the ball to a 6-2, 300-pound center who had never had a rushing carry in his short NFL career.
“Like I said, I felt confident in the moment in that call and it didn’t work out,” Waldron said. “When calls don’t work out, there’s gonna be criticism. I’ll always look inwardly first and then move on to the next one, and we’re on to Arizona.”
Asked if the criticism was valid, Waldron reiterated his defense of the call.
“I think there’s always valid criticism when things don’t work out,” Waldron said. “Like I said, we’ll work inwardly. We’ll wrap our arms around each other and work to look forward and execute better and call better plays the next situation that that arises.”
He said he would call the same play if he had the call to do over.
“In that moment? Yeah, I was confident. I had trust in it,” Waldron said. “And looking back at it, all the things that go into any call throughout the course of the game, whether it’s early calls that lead to stuff not working, or calls in the middle, calls in the end, critical calls — I always assess those and go forward.”