Packers players take ownership for late-game mistakes vs. Bears

Two big self-inflicted wounds really helped fuel the fire of the Green Bay Packers’ Saturday night collapse against the Chicago Bears. According to Next Gen Stats, the Bears at one point only had a 0.5 percent chance of winning the game before the Packers surrendered an onside kick to Chicago.

According to The Athletic’s Matt Schneidman, receiver Romeo Doubs, who muffed the kickoff, took ownership of his mistake in the locker room after the game.

Here’s what Doubs said:

S***, I missed it. That’s just this game, bro. I rep this s*** all week and yeah, bro, somebody gotta be responsible and I’m willing to take on 1000% of it.

That mistake led to the Packers-Bears game going into overtime. Once in overtime, Green Bay’s lone possession ended on a fourth-and-one play where quarterback Malik Willis was supposed to fake a jet sweep to cornerback Bo Melton, on Melton’s only offensive play of the day, before handing off to running back Emanuel Wilson.

Wilson never got that handoff, as Willis mishandled the snap. Wilson picked the ball off the ground and ran into the back of his line short of the first down marker.

In the post-game press conference, Willis said that the play was a miscommunication between him and center Sean Rhyan.

He wasn’t expecting me to change up the cadence. The clock got low, and I just trying to hurry up and get it snapped. So we were just a little off timing.

For reference, the Packers had called a timeout before the play. The ball was snapped with either four or five seconds left on the play clock.

After the fumble, the match became a sudden-death game. The next team to score would leave victorious. Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams connected on a long touchdown to receiver DJ Moore for a walk-off touchdown.

The player in coverage, who was actually in-phase on the play, was cornerback Keisean Nixon. The ball had basically no margin of error because of the tight coverage, but Williams and Moore still were able to execute.

After the game, Nixon was ready to talk to the press, but fellow cornerback Nate Hobbs “shooed” the media away and took Nixon’s place.

Nixon and Hobbs had a mishap earlier in the game that led to a score when defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley cooked up a blitz that left the defensive backs in man coverage. The Bears lined up in tight splits, which makes it very easy to beat man coverage by criss-crossing routes.

Usually, these defensive backs have to recognize the situation, make a “Banjo” check (you’ll often see players pretend to strum a banjo to communicate that). This means that if the players do cross each other, the outside cornerback will just take the outside route and the slot defender will take the inside route, rather than playing true man coverage.

Both players ended up on the outside receiver running the slant (Nixon blew the Banjo check, if it was called; Hobbs blew the man coverage, if they didn’t make the Banjo check) and neither covered the wide open receiver running a corner route.

After the game, Hobbs said that this is going to be the team’s last loss of the season.