Super Bowl LI, a halftime speech & belief: How the Chicago Bears built the greatest comeback in team history

The Chicago Bears were down 21-3.

They were getting soundly beaten by their archrival Green Bay at home in the NFC Wild Card round. The best play of the half was a missed field goal by Brandon McManus.

Retreating to the locker room provided the Bears a brief respite. Somehow, they had to pull themselves together and find a way to go play a whole second half.

After the third quarter, it was 21-6. There was little improvement. Plays needed to be made, and they weren’t

But, the seeds had already been planted. 

All year, Bears coach Ben Johnson was preparing his team for the moment. It goes back to training camp, with an entire season in between, and came full circle in Chicago on a Saturday night in the NFL playoffs.

At halftime, where the Bears got their brief respite, the head coach told the team exactly what the Bears were going to do in the second half.

"We're gonna have the greatest comeback in Bears history," Bears tight end Cole Kmet said.

This is how the Bears build the greatest comeback in team history.

Turn The Clock Back:

Months before the Bears beat the Packers 31-27 in the Wild Card round for the biggest postseason comeback win in franchise history, Bears coach Ben Johnson put on an old game in training camp.

He showed the Bears’ Super Bowl LI. That was when the New England Patriots completed the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history by overcoming a 28-3 third-quarter deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in overtime.

Joe Thuney and Grady Jarrett played in that game, Thuney with New England and Jarrett with Atlanta. They represented both sides of the game. They both reflected on that moment. Johnson used it as an example of why the Bears should never give up in a game.

Johnson called back to that moment.

"That was my message to the group," Johnson said. "This has been done before."

But, it had never been done in Bears’ history before. Let alone against the Packers, the team that has claimed ownership of the Bears for the better part of two decades.

There was monumental work to be done.

The Resume In Hand:

Since training camp, the Bears have been magicians.

After starting 0-2, they’ve won six games when they were trailing in the fourth quarter. They rallied behind a first-year head coach who somehow instilled the belief in a five-win team that they could win any game they play in.

On Saturday, there was no panic. The Bears literally have been in that situation before.

"It's not like we haven't done this all year, you know what I mean?" Kmet said. "I know this is a little bit of a margin – it was a lot to overcome – But, we just took it one play at a time and we just fought our way back."

Wins over the Bengals, Giants, Packers, Vikings, Commanders and Raiders were those moments. The Bears staged comebacks and stunned the opposition.

The Bears have proved time and time again this is not luck. This is no fluke.

If there is time on the clock, the Bears have a chance to win. They believe that.

"We've got the belief and faith," Bears quarterback Caleb Williams said. "That was something coach brought up in the locker room. There's been teams in this situation. We've been in this situation kind of all year." 

In fact, the Bears hear the noise. It doesn’t frustrate them that people downplay their talents or downplay their schemes.

It frustrates the team when others reduce their comeback wins to something other than a team accomplishment.

"We're such a good team and we have such great coaches and such great players," Williams said. "To be in those situations and to come out victorious, there's no ‘oh, this happened.’ (Or) ‘we're lucky.’ We've done it multiple times this year."

Getting The Win:

This all led to Saturday night.

The Bears needed to fight. Their offense couldn’t finish drives and the defense couldn’t stop Green Bay.

Step one: Stop the Packers. After allowing touchdowns on Green Bay’s first three drives of the game, the Bears forced four consecutive punts. They got after Packers’ quarterback Jordan Love and held them to five rushing yards in the second half.

"We made our corrections," linebacker D’Marco Jackson said. "We came outta halftime and we was firing guys, made plays, coaches made the great calls."

The Bears didn’t just need one stop, they needed a few in a row.

They had no room for error. Points could have put the game out of reach. 

Even when Matthew Golden took a short pass and went 23 yards into the end zone to make it 27-16, the Bears didn’t blink. There’s no 30-point play in the NFL rule book. The Bears just needed to keep giving each other chances.

"I kept saying on the top line, just one for one," Bears defensive back Kyler Gordon said. "You can't always go 25 or 25, but you can always go one for one."

In the fourth quarter, down 21-6, the Bears’ offense finally woke up. With three touchdowns in the final 10:08 of the game, the Bears took the lead.

Quarterback Caleb Williams gave the Bears the lead with a pump fake and strike to wide receiver DJ Moore. That put the game back in the hands of the Bears’ defense.

They needed one stop to win the game.

There was one fourth and 10, but the Packers converted. Later, facing third and 15 with seven seconds left, Love took the snap and eluded pressure.

Time ticked down to zero. Love had to scramble and throw it to the end zone. He threw to the left side of the end zone. Gordon was there, lurking. He knew time had run out. That changed the necessity of the moment.

"I knew he was gonna throw it somewhere and I saw him just trying to keep peeping over here in my area," Gordon said. "Once he threw it, we don't need to picket no more. Even though I tried."

Gordon didn’t get that interception.

But, the ball fell to the turf. Comeback complete. Down 21-6, the Bears won.

Yeah, they really did that to the Packers. The Bears gave the team that had dealt them so many devastating losses in recent memory a taste of their own medicine.

Beyond just retribution, the Bears are doing more than just believing they can win games. This belief is sustaining to the point where they can dream beyond just the Wild Card or Divisional rounds. But, to stage a comeback like Saturday was another example around the league: you can’t kill the Bears.

"It's going down in history," Gordon said. "The third time we played him this season, coming back again, against the odds, what's a better game to see?"

In Chicago, there hadn’t been a better game to see like this in a long time.

Few have been better.

"We have an opportunity to have one of the greatest games in Chicago history," Bears right tackle Darnell Wright said. "That's what we did."

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