Bad outweighs the good for Bears special teams in loss to Vikings

After botching a punt that helped the Vikings build a two-touchdown lead late in the third quarter Sunday, DeAndre Carter returned a kickoff 55 yards to fuel the Bears’ mad-dash rally that sent the game into overtime. But he knew he was far, far from even for the day.

“I wouldn’t say that was redeeming myself — we lost the game,” Carter said after the Bears’ 30-27 overtime loss to the Vikings at Soldier Field.

Indeed, Carter’s gaffe on a punt return looked like the biggest blow in the Bears’ fifth-consecutive loss. Linebacker Tremaine Edmunds’ pass break-up on third-and-four from the Bears’ 49-yard line forced the Vikings to punt with 4:20 left in the third quarter and the Bears trailing 17-10.

Carter let the punt bounce at the Bears’ 13 and signaled for everyone to stay away and avoid getting inadvertently hit by the bouncing football. As Bears fate would have it, he was the only one who failed to do that. The ball deflected off the turf and hit him in the leg, and Vikings linebacker Bo Richter recovered at the Bears 15.

Five plays later, running back Aaron Jones scored on a two-yard run to give the Vikings a 24-10 lead.

“That’s on me, I’ve gotta be better,” said Carter, a seven-year veteran who has been the Bears’ lone punt returner this season. “I tried to call a 'Peter' call. Gotta get out of the way of the ball. That’s on me. I let the team down. The game shouldn’t have been in the situation it was in. I felt bad for the guys. I felt bad for HT [special teams coordinator Richard Hightower]. He’s a heluva coordinator. Does a great job. And for me to put the team in a bad situation like that, [I’m] very disappointed in myself.”

It was that kind of day for Hightower and the Bears’ special teams — the highlights weren’t enough to atone for the lowlights.

Cairo Santos’ felt Carter’s pain. After Caleb Williams threw a one-yard touchdown pass to Keenan Allen to cut the Vikings’ lead to 27-24 with 22 seconds left, Santos executed a picture-perfect onside kick that teammate Tarvarius Moore recovered at the Bears’ 43. Two plays later, Santos kicked a 48-yard field goal as time expired to send the game into overtime.

It capped an unlikely comeback and sent the Soldier Field crowd into a delirious frenzy. But ultimately it didn’t atone for another hard-to-believe moment. Santos’ 48-yard field goal attempt in the second quarter was blocked — a week after the Packers blocked his 46-yard attempt as time expired that would have won the game.

“I take the blame in kind of the stink that we have on our field goal unit right now,” said. Santos, who had had one kick of 46 yards or longer blocked since made 124 of 137 (90.5%) of his field goals — with two blocked — since 2020 prior to last week. “We’ve gone so many kicks in a row without getting kicks blocked — 16 50-yarders the last two years [without] getting a kick blocked. And sometimes they happen like that, back to back.”

The Bears worked on improving their interior protection after last week’s failure. But the Vikings found another weakness.

“I don’t even know what to say about that,” lineman Matt Pryor said. Obviously once you see it, they’re gonna start attacking it. Green Bay, they kind of hit the “A” gap. So we made sure we made corrections to be more firm inside. I think [the Vikings] hit it from the outside. That’s stuff we’ve got to correct this week.”

“Whenever that happens two games in a row," Bears coach Matt Eberflus said, "we got to take a hard look in terms of the protection, the technique, then who we have in there. It's going to be a big thing to look at today.”

The Bears did that last week. By now, even Eberflus has to know he’s running out of time.