GREEN BAY — Chicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos first raced around Lambeau Field doing his soccer-inspired celebration. But when he found himself near the back of the end zone among a mob of teammates Sunday, he looked toward the stands and saw his opportunity.
His Lambeau Leap into a couple of Green Bay Packers fans wasn’t very successful.
“Immediately, I got pushed in the helmet and got denied,” Santos said.
What mattered was that his 51-yard field goal to end the Bears’ season finale was not denied. Seven weeks after the Packers blocked Santos’ potential winning 46-yard field-goal attempt at Soldier Field, Santos found his redemption by nailing his only field-goal attempt of the afternoon to lift the Bears to a 24-22 victory.
The kick — and the winning drive that rookie quarterback Caleb Williams engineered in the final minute — ended two lengthy Bears losing streaks — 11 straight losses to the Packers dating to December 2018 and 10 straight losses this season dating to the Oct. 13 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
The Packers were playing for a chance at a higher playoff seeding, but a win wouldn’t have mattered since the Washington Commanders beat the Dallas Cowboys to clinch the No. 6 seed, leaving the Packers at No. 7.
“I didn’t plan for any of it,” Santos said of his celebrations. “I just wanted to let my emotions out. I think a lot of it was leading up, all these weeks from when we first played them. I just let it out.”
That’s what Sunday’s win was about for the Bears — letting out the frustrations of the last 2 ½ months. The late-game errors, the poor execution, the coaches being fired, the franchise record-tying losing streak. For an afternoon, the Bears could end a game with joy, crank the music in the locker room, shoutout Bears owner Virginia McCaskey on her 102nd birthday and, for many players on the team, breathe a sigh of relief that they can finally say they have beaten the Packers. The Bears hadn’t won at Lambeau Field since 2015.
On Monday, those same players will clean out their lockers at Halas Hall and head into the offseason.
The victory Sunday didn’t change that the Bears still finished 5-12 and in last place in the NFC North while all of their division rivals head to the playoffs. The win didn’t change that Bears leaders will now ramp up their search to find a coach to replace Matt Eberflus. The triumph over a Packers team that played most of the game without starting quarterback Jordan Love didn’t change the fact that the Bears have a lengthy list of things that need improvement this offseason.
But for a bit, they got to revel in the buzz of the win, which tight end Cole Kmet said was “pure joy and excitement,” even when he knows to keep it in proper perspective.
“I don’t want to go too crazy about it,” Kmet said. “To end this year, I mean, we’ve been through a lot. And I think it kind of shows that we’re as talented as anybody, but the way that the year went, obviously things just kind of took a turn. … A learning lesson for me this year is just how you emotionally respond to (challenges). We obviously had a lot of emotional games that we played in and a lot of emotional losses, so if we could just rebound quicker, you know, we could be a pretty good team.”
Sunday’s game had something positive from all of the Bears units — a punt return for a touchdown on a throwback play, two takeaways including one that eventually led to a touchdown and a finishing touch by Williams that confirmed to interim coach Thomas Brown that he has a “killer instinct.”
After the Bears had just 57 net yards in the first half, Williams began to put it together in the second half with some big help from wide receiver DJ Moore, who had nine catches for 86 yards.
The biggest play came on the final drive after the Packers took a 22-21 lead on Brandon McManus’ 55-yard field goal with 58 seconds remaining. On third-and-11 from the Bears 49-yard line with 15 seconds to play, Williams went to Moore for an 18-yard pass up the middle, then rushed his team to the line to spike the ball with two seconds to play. That set up Santos’ field goal.
The Packers called a timeout just before the third-down pass, and Williams got on the same page as Moore about what to do depending on the defense. The successful execution and clock management were in contrast to another late-game loss — the Thanksgiving game against the Detroit Lions that was the last straw for Eberflus.
“I tell DJ in the huddle, ‘If they press you like that again, you’ll run a vertical, a go ball. If they get outside leverage, we’ll run a glance or a five-step and snap it off,’” Williams said. “He just made sure that we were on the same page so we can go and execute. And then after I told DJ that, I told everybody that it’s down-down-clock, and then once DJ catches it, we’ll have to run it up there, clock it and then put it through the uprights.”
The play was also redemption for Moore, who had fumbled inside the two-minute warning as the Bears, with a 21-19 lead, were trying to run out the clock or go up by more. Four plays later, McManus hit his field goal, leading to the final drive.
The third-down catch wasn’t the only big play for Moore, who also turned a short Williams pass early in the fourth quarter into a 32-yard touchdown. He cut toward the right sideline and outran two Packers defenders to the end zone for a 21-13 Bears lead.
“I said, ‘It’s a lot of people inside so I’m about to do some Mario Kart stuff and then go back out and hopefully I’ll score this time,’” Moore said.
Moore also played the decoy on Josh Blackwell’s 94-yard punt return for a touchdown in the first quarter that gave the Bears their first lead since Nov. 24.
With Moore back on the left side, Bears players faked as if the punt was going to him. Meanwhile, Blackwell raced backward down the right sideline, fielded the punt and then took off untouched for the first return touchdown of his career.
Blackwell said he knew as soon as he caught the ball that he could score. The Bears revived the play from a 2011 play involving Johnny Knox and Devin Hester that was called back because of a penalty. The Bears had been practicing it for two years, and special teams coordinator Richard Hightower saw on film the opportunity to run it successfully this week, Blackwell said.
“We had nothing to lose, so it’s like, go out guns blazing,” Blackwell said. “It’s Green Bay. Whatever it takes to win, just go do it.”
The Bears defense also came through, though it was mostly against backup quarterback Malik Willis after Love left the game in the second quarter with an elbow injury. Running back Josh Jacobs also sat out the second half.
Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson and safety Kevin Byard forced fumbles, with Johnson’s leading to a D’Andre Swift touchdown in the second quarter and a 14-13 halftime lead.
Byard was new to the Bears this year, but even he knew the game was one the fans and organization wanted despite the lost season. The Bears players wanted it too, if only because it meant heading into the offseason “the right way.”
“We talked about that last night,” Byard said. “Obviously this is a new year, 2025. We kind of wanted to take this last game and swing some momentum into the next season with it being a new year. … We made it a little hard on ourselves. But to be able to come up here to Green Bay and get the win, it means a lot to this organization.”
More wins in the offseason would mean even more.
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