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The last play of the Browns game — a Justin Fields Hail Mary — nearly gave Bears the win
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- The last play of the Browns game — a Justin Fields Hail Mary — nearly gave Bears the win
CLEVELAND — Kevin Stefanski, in all honesty, may not have even seen how the final play unfolded.
"I blacked out," the Browns coach acknowledged. "I don't know."
D'Anthony Bell knew exactly what to do. The Browns safety just trusted his instincts.
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"Well, I just seen everybody jump up," Bell said after his interception off a deflected Hail Mary preserved the Browns 20-17 win over the Bears . "So my first instinct was, we've been watching plays on the same thing, so my first instinct was try to run to the front and make sure nobody else caught it. So I was going to try to dive on the ground to stop him from catching it. It popped up into my hands. So lucky catch, I guess."
That "lucky catch" was the difference between the Browns (9-5) coming away with their ninth win of the season and suffering one of the most disappointing on-field losses in some time. All it took was for the lucky catch to actually go to Chicago 's Darnell Mooney on the 45-yard Hail Mary pass instead of bouncing out of his hands and into Bell's.
Luck, though, has been on the Browns side for some time this season. Much like how San Francisco 's Jake Moody missed a field goal in the final seconds of the Browns' Week 6 win , sometimes the luck involved a bit of bad luck for the other team.
"Damn near s*** myself dog," tight end David Njoku said. "But luckily our defense made an exceptional play, sealed the game and that was it."
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With 5 seconds remaining, quarterback Justin Fields threw into a crowd of players, including Bears tight end Cole Kmet and at least four Browns defenders. The ball was knocked out of Kmet's hands and headed toward the front of the end zone, where Mooney found his way out of the scrum.
As Mooney fell backwards, the ball hit his hands and he began to pull it toward his body as he fell down. As he did, it squirted through his hands and toward his feet, where he appeared to kick the ball into the air.
That kick allowed Bell to get his hands on the ball. Bell rans out of the end zone to the 2, where he slid down to end the game.
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Meanwhile, on the sideline, Browns receiver Amari Cooper was waiting for the sound. Except that, that sound didn't seem to be coming.
"Oh my gosh, yeah, that was, man, because the crowd, generally when the ball touches someone's hands and you're in the home crowd, they're cheering," Cooper said. "But when the ball touched whoever's hands, it was so cluttered up that you couldn't really see, the crowd didn't really respond, as if the play didn't go our way. But one of those guys on the other team said that he caught the ball and then he didn't catch the ball. So man, that would've been crazy."
Fields created a little bit of time before he threw the pass by rolling to his right. He caught a view of All-Pro edge rusher Myles Garrett , who also got a view himself on the final pass.
"Too good of a view," Garrett said. "He (Fields) kind of looked at me, just made sure I was far enough away and then tossed it up. I was like, please, lord, don't let us be one of these like, YouTube compilations."
Bears wide receiver Darnell Mooney (11) sit on the field after an incomplete pass in the second half against the Browns, Sunday, Dec. 17, 2023, in Cleveland.
The Browns dealt with a similar situation earlier in the game.
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The Bears had the ball at the end of the half at the Cleveland 37. On that play, Fields uncorked a pass to the right side of the same end zone where his final pass later went. Linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah intercepted the pass at the end of the first half after it was batted down, preserving a 7-7 halftime score.
The Browns had used their last time out with 10 seconds remaining, prior to the play before the final Hail Mary. Stefanski, though, was upset with the 30-yard catch and run by Chicago's Tyler Scott , the Norton High School product, which put the ball at the 45 with 15 seconds remaining.
"We were just talking about the situation," Stefanski said. "Make sure everybody's on the same page. They should not have gotten that big play to get them down there, obviously. Then just conversations about what they're going to do next. And obviously, it felt like the ball was going to go in the end zone on that last one. And you have to execute. I know it wasn't perfect by us. I know you could say we got lucky or whatever, but I thought the guys understood what they had to do."
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Last play of the Browns game nearly gave the Bears a win
