CHGO Digest: Tyrique Stevenson apologizes after taunting crowd during Hail Mary

Good morning, friends!

1. Double doink.
2. Randall Cobb touchdown in 2013.
3. Yesterday?

Yikes. Completely and utterly deflating. How does a team even rebound from that? How is the rest of the locker room reacting to the Tyrique Stevenson clip? What is Shane Waldron thinking at any given moment during a football game?

All valid questions. Arizona won’t be a pushover next week, and now the pressure’s on. 5-2 wouldn’t just look better than 4-3, but it’d feel better, too. Alas…

Onto Week 9 sitting in last place in the NFC North.

— Patrick Norton

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Tyrique Stevenson apologizes…

As if it couldn’t get any worse. Tyrique Stevenson had about the most Tyrique Stevenson day possible on Sunday. The second-year corner had multiple touchdown-saving tackles and defended a beautiful ball from Jayden Daniels to Terry McLaurin to keep the Commanders out of the end zone on a second-half drive.

On the flip side, Stevenson couldn’t control his emotions and failed to let his game do the talking. After a verbal spat with McLaurin, the 24-year-old defensive back was faced with a more sizable foe – guard Sam Cosmi. Stevenson received a 15-yard penalty for poking Cosmi’s face through his face mask.

And then came the play that’ll haunt Bears fans for weeks, months, and possibly years. Not only was the result unfortunate, but thirty minutes after the game ended, our timelines were filled with a video posted by Twitter user Joe Abdo. The clip shows Stevenson taunting the Washington crowd before and during the Hail Mary.

• Mostly everybody was unaware of Stevenson’s actions immediately after the game. It’s why head coach Matt Eberflus didn’t address it, and why players weren’t asked about it during their availability in the locker room post-game.

• It doesn’t help that Stevenson was the first defensive back to get his hand on the ball. And instead of batting it down or forward, the cornerback popped it toward the endzone and into the air. It was a catastrophic play all around only made worse by Stevenson’s taunting and dilly-dallying during the play.

• About three hours after the game ended, Stevenson tweeted, “To Chicago and teammates my apologies for lack of awareness and focus …. The game ain’t over until zeros hit the clock. Can’t take anything for granted. Notes taken, improvement will happen. #Beardown“

🔎 GO DEEPER | Nicholas Moreano with insight from the locker room on what went wrong for the Bears defense on the Hail Mary.

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Three takeaways from Sunday’s devastating loss

• I don’t want to dwell on it too much, but Stevenson’s mental lapse at the end of the game cannot go unchecked. I’m interested in seeing how it gets handled at Halas Hall this week. I doubt we’ll get much more than Matt Eberflus saying it can’t happen and that it’ll be handled internally, but it’s a situation that’s so unimaginable, there’d be a roster move involved this week if Stevenson wasn’t also an incredibly talented and young cornerback on the rise. Send a message.

• Shane Waldron, what gives, man? The Bears have scored 10 points in first quarters so far this season. Chicago’s offensive coordinator even said on Thursday that fixing the slower starts was a point of emphasis in practice. Back to the drawing board. But the issues ran much deeper than the first quarter in Maryland. After D’Andre Swift finally put the Bears on the board with a 56-yard scamper to the endzone in the third quarter, Chicago’s next offensive drive was a quick one: incomplete pass, incomplete pass, incomplete pass. D’Andre Swift finished Sunday with 129 yards on 18 carries and it still felt like he wasn’t used enough.
  
  And then there’s the Doug Kramer mishap. Caleb Williams was credited with the fumble on the goal line, and Kramer apologized after the game for letting his team down, but it comes back to one person: Waldron. Why is that the play call down five in the fourth quarter? The play is a fun reward late in the fourth up three scores. And maybe we wouldn’t be thinking about it if the Hail Mary didn’t happen and the Bears won. But the Hail Mary happened, the Bears lost, and now every poor decision from Sunday is open to valid scrutiny.

• For just a moment, I let myself believe. Mistake. Down in the fourth quarter, I leaned over to Mark Carman and said, “If they actually come back, I’ll buy in.” I was at the Thursday game two seasons ago when Justin Fields, Darnell Mooney and the Bears fell just short of a late win against Carson Wentz and the Commanders. Sunday felt like a carbon copy with one exception – Chicago actually punched it in for the lead. It felt like things might be different for once. And then heartbreak. Only the Bears. Not even the late-game heroism of Caleb Williams could save Chicago.

🏈 RELIVE THE MISERY | Our instant reactions from Sunday’s stunning loss.

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CHGO Bears Podcast!

🎧 SPOTIFY | APPLE PODCASTS | Bears fall on HEARTBREAKING hail mary as time expires

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