Five extra points: Vikings coverage blunder led to Bears’ ‘soul-crushing’ kick return

The massive special teams breakdown that handed Bears All-Pro Devin Duvernay a 56-yard kickoff return to set up Chicago’s walk-off 48-yard field goal in Sunday’s 19-17 Vikings loss is something Vikings special teams coordinator Matt Daniels had been warning his players about.

“All week, we talked about Duvernay catching the ball in that corner [to the right] and going to the wide side of the field [on the left],” said special-teamer Tavierre Thomas, the widest defender to the left of the kick-coverage formation. “All I can say is guys got to do their job and trust the coaching.”

Three Vikings — Ivan Pace Jr. and rookies Austin Keys and Tai Felton — abandoned their lanes on the far left side of the front line and over-pursued to the right as Duvernay cut hard the other way and slipped through a big gap between rookie Tyler Batty to the inside and Thomas to the outside.

“There’s supposed to be two guys between me and Tavierre,” Batty said. “We just need everyone staying in their lanes and netting the field the way we should.”

Eric Wilson did a nice job chasing Duvernay down at the Vikings’ 40, but it didn’t matter with 42 seconds left and the Bears already in field goal range.

“That return,” said linebacker Blake Cashman, “was soul-crushing.”

Bears coach Ben Johnson made changes to his No. 3-ranked running attack that surprised the Vikings and contributed to Chicago’s only touchdown drive consisting of 11 runs in 15 plays that covered 74 yards, consumed 8:25 of the second quarter and put the Bears ahead 7-3. Cashman said Johnson showed new counter plays out of big personnel groupings and also had more runs to the weak side.

After two three-and-outs and another punt, the Bears opened with Caleb Williams scrambling for 7 yards. The Bears then ran 10 more times on that possession, picking up five first downs and a 1-yard touchdown by rookie Kyle Monangai.

“Too many leaky yards,” Cashman said. “Runs that should have been for two yards were going for five, six.”

The Bears converted three third downs on the drive, all via the run. D.J. Moore had a 3-yard run on third-and-3, Williams had a 3-yard sneak on third-and-1, and Monangai had a 6-yard run on third-and-4 from the Vikings’ 7.

“I’m proud that the run defense improved after that,” Cashman said. “But that was one frustrating drive.”

I’d like to say J.J. McCarthy looked like Christian Ponder. But that might not be fair to Ponder at this point. Another 16 incompletions in 32 attempts dropped McCarthy’s completion percentage to 52.9. Ponder’s was 54.3 his rookie season in 2011. However bad McCarthy was, the defense can’t or shouldn’t point fingers. Cashman didn’t when asked if the defense played well enough to win.

The Vikings lost the turnover battle (2-0) for the sixth time this season. For the fifth time, they didn’t have a takeaway. The team that led the NFL with 24 interceptions a year ago came into Week 11 ranked 28^th with three picks. The Vikings’ nine takeaways — five of which came in one game — ranked 22^nd heading into Week 11. Williams wasn’t exactly stellar for the Bears with 16 incompletions himself, but he was supported by two interceptions — the Bears’ league-leading 21^st and 22^nd takeaways.

Watch the postgame Access Vikings:

The good news is the Vikings had only two penalties for 15 yards a week after having 13 for 102 yards, including eight false starts in a home loss to Baltimore. The bad news is they still had a damaging false start, called on left tackle Christian Darrisaw on third-and-2 during the Vikings’ first drive of the second half. One of McCarthy’s worst throws of the day — and that’s saying something — came one snap later when the jittery young QB threw maybe 20 feet high on a short out route to Justin Jefferson to force a punt while trailing 13-3.

Coach Kevin O’Connell described the changes he had to make to McCarthy’s cadence after the Ravens game: “We were on a smooth, quick cadence, which in a lot of ways is essentially walking up to the line of scrimmage and saying, ‘set-hut’ — not to give all of our information out there,” he said. “It looked like we were navigating our way through the day without any of them after the work that we put in. So that one was very frustrating.”

Williams didn’t have to be a hero on third down because 11 of Chicago’s 18 third downs were third-and-5 or shorter. Chicago ran the ball for five of its seven conversions, and each one came on third-and-4 or shorter. Williams converted one on a 3-yard sneak but otherwise was only 3-of-9 for 38 yards and only two conversions on third down. He did, however, convert on third-and-13 with a 16-yard slant against pressure to Luther Burden III and on third-and-14 with a 25-yard blitz-beater to tight end Colston Loveland.