The story of the 2024 Chicago Bears is one that is littered with brutal, almost inconceivable last-minute losses. The Hail Mary debacle in Washington. A pair of no-shows against the Cardinals and Patriots. A clock management fiasco on Thanksgiving Day against the Detroit Lions that cost Matt Eberflus his job. And maybe worst of all, a blocked field goal at the gun against the hated Green Bay Packers back in Week 11. It was as if this team was hell-bent on making an art-form out of losing football games.
But then on the final Sunday of the 2024 season, Chicago managed to do something completely unexpected… they defeated the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on a last-second field goal. I mean, tortured Bears fans like myself will be quick to tell you that the odds of something like this happening were infinitesimal. Yet when Cairo Santos found himself in an eerily similar spot as he was in just a month and a half ago against the Packers, this time around he managed to boot it right through the uprights.
Thanks to some final drive heroics from Caleb Williams and the right leg of Cairo Santos, the Bears snatched the proverbial monkey off their back and ended a handful of horrible, unspeakable streaks.
“The Bears win for the first time since Week 6, win a Sunday road game for the first time since 2021, beat the Packers for the first time since 2018, and win in Lambeau for the first time since 2015,” tweeted Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic.
Now cheeseheads will be quick to point out that the Packers had nothing to play for — except for a six-seed on the NFC side of the Playoff bracket — and that Jordan Love didn’t play at all in the 2nd half. However, context be damned, the Bears won a game in Green Bay and that in and of itself is worth celebrating, even if the last three months have been an unequivocal disaster.
