Caleb Williams and the Bears had a message for the Packers after Saturday night’s victory. “We’re here,” Williams said. “And we’re going to be here for a while.” Todd Rosenberg / Getty Images
copied from: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6961046/2026/01/11/bears-caleb-williams-playoff-comeback-legacy/
By Dan Wiederer
Jan. 11, 2026Updated 12:28 pm EST
CHICAGO — Caleb Williams returned to the Chicago Bears’ locker room late Saturday night with a foam cheese-grater hat atop his head, stopping first by DJ Moore’s locker stall and giving the receiver’s 2-year-old son, Denniston Oliver, a fist bump. Denniston Oliver, too, was wearing a foam cheese-grater, and while he may not realize it yet, his dad and Williams had just put an indelible stamp on the NFL’s oldest rivalry.
In the most dramatic way, too. Again.
Three weeks after Williams and Moore connected on a game-winning 46-yard overtime touchdown pass, the duo once again turned Soldier Field upside down with a 25-yard TD pass on the Bears’ final possession, with 1:43 remaining, to give the Bears a 31-27 playoff win over the Green Bay Packers.
The delirium pulsing across Soldier Field became instantly unforgettable, a no-bleeping-way eruption after another mind-bending finish.
Of course, it was Williams, the bold quarterback who arrived in Chicago a little more than 20 months ago vowing to write a new, more successful chapter of Bears history, using his Sharpie for Saturday night’s fantastic finish. Williams threw two touchdown passes in the final five minutes and added a key 2-point conversion throw.
“When the lights are bright,” Moore said, “he’s brighter than them lights out there.”
This time, the degree of difficulty on the Bears’ final TD was so much lower, teed up by a well-timed and well-designed play call — a fake wide receiver screen to Luther Burden III that baited the Green Bay defense and, most significantly, cornerback Carrington Valentine. The Packers bit the hook. And just like that, Moore was free, open up the left sideline with one of the most cold-blooded quarterbacks in the sport tossing him the football.
Burden’s eyes grew wide as he watched the Packers defense come for him.
“We got ’em,” Burden said with a smile. “I knew it was a touchdown.”
Moore did, too, with Valentine helpless in pursuit.
“We worked on that a few times in practice,” Moore said. “It played out the same way.”
Williams loved the call by coach Ben Johnson.
“Once we lined up,” he said, “I actually knew we were about to hit it just off the demeanor of the guys on the other side of the ball. I just had a feeling that that was going to be the one.”
Indeed it was, the triple-exclamation point on a ridiculous Bears rally, a comeback from 18 points down at halftime for the franchise’s first playoff victory in 15 years. The organization’s biggest postseason comeback ever. Against the rival that had spent the previous 30-plus years ripping their hearts out.
Payback, the old saying goes …
Don’t think it was lost on Williams and the rest of this team that the Packers had spent the days leading up to Saturday night publicly promising get-back for their Week 16 loss in Chicago, an overtime miracle that allowed the Bears to win the NFC North.
The Packers wanted it known they were returning to Chicago full of purpose and ill intent. Yet rather than plugging their ears and adopting the convenient “We’re worried about us” mantra, the Bears used all such chatter from Green Bay as fuel.
“They wanted us. That’s what I heard,” Williams said. “They wanted it and they got it.”
Admittedly, the Bears could have done a much better job giving it to the Packers sooner. A messy first half created some very real halftime tension. The Bears were down 21-3 and sputtering. Johnson asked his players to start envisioning a legendary comeback.
“The only option we had,” Williams said, “was to go out there and be legendary. Go out and execute. … Have each other’s back. Go win the effing game.”
After they did, Moore took a moment to consider all he’d experienced over the previous four hours. “It was like a movie,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding. No football screenwriter would have included all this.
The pregame weather system that turned Soldier Field into a vigorously shaken snow globe. The midfield dustup before the national anthem, with both teams staking claim to the orange “C” at the 50-yard line and talking mess back and forth. The sideline cameos by Bears Hall of Famers Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester.
This was cinematic all right, adding extra juice to the halftime idea of making the script really sing.
“We needed to get our stuff together,” Moore said, “and go back out and play Bear football.”What You Should Read NextHow Ben Johnson inspired the Bears to pull off a historic playoff comebackAt halftime, Johnson told Bears players they could have the biggest playoff comeback in team history, and they did in upsetting the Packers.
On the whole, Williams’ performance Saturday was far more clutch than consistent. At halftime, he had just 78 passing yards and a 35.9 passer rating.
Williams had as many incompletions in his playoff debut (24) as completions. For the first time since the third game of his rookie season, he threw two interceptions within the same game, both on busted fourth-down plays. At times, his aggravation was evident.
It all felt ominous.
Even the most hope-filled Bears optimists had at least a 10-minute doom stretch, convinced an exhilarating season was about to end in the cruelest of ways, with a postseason pummeling from the neighborhood bully.
But then the Packers started getting tight. After averaging 7.2 yards per play and rolling up 231 yards in the first half, Green Bay opened the second half with four consecutive punts and only one first down across those possessions. The flickering flame of belief on the Bears’ sideline suddenly had oxygen. Then, when the fourth quarter arrived, Williams became a blowtorch and went about burning the Packers’ season to ashes.
He threw for 183 of his 361 yards in the final period as the Bears scored 25 points.
Said Burden: “He turned into Iceman mode. He activated that. He knows what’s at stake. He knows we go as far as he’ll take us.”
Added Johnson: “He just started feeling it there.”
On the possession before Moore’s go-ahead TD, Williams hit receiver Olamide Zaccheaus for an 8-yard score and followed with a conversion connection to rookie tight end Colston Loveland. That drive received its signature moment with a fourth-and-8 conversion that defied logic — Williams to receiver Rome Odunze for 27 yards, one of nine completions for at least 20 yards.
Before the play, Williams said, Johnson offered some headset prodding.
I need you right here. Go make a play, kid.
Thus, when the pocket dented and Williams was flushed left by stampeding linebacker Isaiah McDuffie, the Bears quarterback somehow did his whole “Iceman” bit with an off-platform throw 36 yards through the air, up the field and into a small window near the sideline.
“I saw the space before when I was dropping back,” Williams said. ‘So I went in that direction. Honestly, understanding it’s fourth down, I’ve got to put the ball in play.
“Rome went and made a great catch.”
Bears safety Kevin Byard called that “one of the most special throws I’ve seen this year.”
“I don’t think he had his feet on the ground when he threw the ball up in the air,” Byard said. “And it was a dime. On fourth down. That was for the game. When the game is on the line and we need him to make a play, he’s always there.
“You kind of look around like, ‘Did he seriously just make that play?’”
Byard smiled.
“Listen, I knew once he made that play to Rome, we were going to win the game. It was only a matter of time.”
Think about that. The Bears were still trailing by 11 with 5:29 remaining and Byard, the most level-headed leader on the team, knew the game was over.What You Should Read NextBears are gonna find out how far belief (and cheese graters) can take themChicago has wanted a Bears team like this for a very long time. And now the city has it.
Here is the part of the movie where the reel shifts to the flashback montage and all the soul-crushing ambushes Packers star Aaron Rodgers put on the Bears over the years.
Rodgers celebrating a 21-14 upset of the Bears in the 2010 NFC Championship Game.
Rodgers to Randall Cobb, 48 yards on fourth down in the 2013 finale for the division title.
Rodgers to Geronimo Allison, 39 yards to ignite a comeback from down 20-3 in the 2018 opener on “Sunday Night Football” — a rally finished with Rodgers to Cobb for 75 yards later in the game.
Now, though, this is the point where Chicago pinches itself and realizes that, yes, Saturday night actually happened. That comeback was real. And the Bears now have their own soul-crusher in the huddle, the fearless young quarterback who has beaten Green Bay in three of his last four tries. With late game-winning drives each time.
On Saturday night, Williams did it on the playoff stage. Against all odds. With a special comeback that will be remembered forever.
On Friday night, Williams told teammates that players make their money during the regular season and cement their legacies in the playoffs. On cue, he helped deliver one of the most memorable Bears wins of all time and a message to Green Bay.
“We’re here,” Williams said afterward. “And we’re going to be here for a while.”
