Ben Johnson nearly pulled off another ‘Stumble Bum’ trick play with the Bears in Week 4 and Caleb Williams explains why it didn’t work
Ben Johnson tried to use another play from his bag of tricks.
The Chicago Bears are in the midst of another well-earned Victory Monday following Week 4 and ready to enjoy a much-needed long bye week to get healthy and rejuvenated.
Looking back to the close win over the Las Vegas Raiders, the Bears really had to fight tooth and nail to come out on top, which was a telling sign for this team.
It was a tight game for all four quarters and in those games, it only takes one explosive play to swing the momentum. Las Vegas got a few of those on the ground with rookie RB Ashton Jeanty and the Bears hit a couple as well, but Chicago had some creative ones the team would like to have back.
Bears tried to dig into Ben Johnson’s bag of trick plays in Week 4 against the Raiders
Last week, we got to see the first successful trick play of the Ben Johnson Era when the offense ran a flea flicker pass that quarterback Caleb Williams launched down the field for an early touchdown against the Dallas Cowboys.
One week later, Johnson tried to reuse one infamous design that tricked Chicago while he was the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions and fans might not have even noticed it. That’s right, the Bears tried to attempt their own version of the “Stumble Bum” on Sunday.
During the second quarter on a 3rd-and-1, Williams took the snap and “stumbled” on his drop back before regaining his composure and moving out to his right. The idea being that the “stumble” would suck the defense in and free an open receiver for a big play down the field. With only one yard to gain, it was the ideal situation to hunt for an explosive.
“That was one of those where we have a group of guys that come up with plays, and we felt like that could take advantage of something we saw,” Johnson explained. “We were really in two-down territory, in my mind, at that point anyway, so I knew that we were going for an explosive play on that one and if we didn’t get it, then we were going to go for it on the next one.”
Unforunately, Williams had to force the pass to WR Rome Odunze and it ended up being incomplete on the sidelines. Fortunately, the Bears managed to convert on the fourth-down the following play.
“They did a great job on defense,” Williams said about the third-down play. “They ended up getting some run through. I should have hit Rome, even after the scramble. It’s frustrating that I missed that pass, but they did a good job with defense, and they covered it out and got some run through. I couldn’t go through the progressions.”
It wasn’t the only trick play the Bears tried against the Raiders. Early in the third quarter, Williams handed the ball off to RB D’Andre Swift on 1st-and-10, who then faked a lateral similar to the flea flicker the Bears ran in Week 3. Williams even sold the play by jumping up like the lateral was too high, like it was last week.
In reality, Swift kept the ball and rushed for seven yards but the play was called back due to a facemask penalty on Swift.
While those two particular plays didn’t work out as the team might have hoped, you can’t fault Johnson for hunting the explosives in such a tight game. He’s not going to call the game scared and if those plays managed to hit, it would have been a major turning point for Chicago.
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