WOW! An overtime, walk-off touchdown run from an ailing Jordan Howard gives the Bears their first win of the season, an upset at home over the Steelers! I AM HYPED.
But to step back for a minute.
Thanks to lucky breaks and Steelers mistakes, the Bears had a chance to be up 14 points or more in the first half of this game. And thanks to their own mistakes (including an all-timer mistake by Marcus Cooper) and general ineffectiveness doing anything that wasn’t Jordan Howard running the ball, the Bears headed into halftime with a 10-point lead. The mistakes and ineffectiveness got worse in the second half, allowing the Steelers to come back. More on that later.
Mike Glennon continues to demonstrate a total inability to adjust as the play develops in front of him or as the line breaks down, and he simply cannot make effective throws down field even when he has time (he almost never targeted his wide receivers, and one of his downfield throws to tight end Zach Miller was so poorly thrown that it was easily intercepted and set up the game-tying field goal in the 4th quarter). More on that, too, later.
But this is a happy day for now! The Bears won the toss for overtime, marched down the field thanks in large part to an enormous run by Tarik Cohen (which was a touchdown, but called back because it was ruled that he stepped out of bounds), and then walked it off on Howard’s 19-yard run.
Howard was a beast in this one, not only in his performance, but in his ability to keep coming back into the game despite obvious pain in his shoulder. Hopefully he can keep it going.