Fourth-quarter flip at Soldier Field
On a chilly, noisy Monday night in Chicago, J.J. McCarthy went from shaky to stone-cold. The Minnesota Vikings rookie, playing his first regular-season game after missing all of last year with a knee injury, rallied his team to a 27-24 win over the Bears with a fourth quarter that looked nothing like the first three. It was his NFL debut. It did not feel like one by the end.
For most of the night, the Bears had him right where they wanted him. A 74-yard interception return by corner Nahshon Wright stretched Chicago’s lead to 17-6 in the third quarter, the Soldier Field crowd roared, and the Vikings’ offense kept sputtering. McCarthy pressed a few throws. The timing was off. Chicago’s front made him uncomfortable and the run game wasn’t bailing him out.
Then the switch flipped. Early in the fourth, McCarthy found Justin Jefferson in tight space for a touchdown that calmed everything down. Nine minutes later, with 9:46 left, he hit Aaron Jones on a 27-yard strike up the left seam for Minnesota’s first lead of the night. With 2:53 to go, he kept the ball on a designed run, split two defenders, and finished a 14-yard touchdown that felt like a statement: the ball, the game, the moment were his.
When it ended, the box score said 13-of-20 for 143 yards, two passing touchdowns, one interception, plus that decisive rushing score. It wasn’t gaudy. It was the kind of stat line that reads better when you remember every throw in the fourth quarter mattered.
Across the field, Caleb Williams did plenty to show why he went first overall in 2024. The Bears’ young quarterback accounted for two touchdowns—one through the air, one on the ground—and finished as Chicago’s leading rusher with 58 yards on six carries. He extended plays, took smart yards when they were there, and had the Vikings chasing him to the sideline more than once. But Chicago’s offense never found a consistent run rhythm, and the penalties piled up at the worst times.
That is where the Bears were hurt most. Pre-snap infractions wiped out manageable downs and stunted promising drives. D’Andre Swift managed 53 yards on 17 carries—just 3.1 yards per attempt—and the interior run game never forced Minnesota to compromise its coverage. For three quarters, the defense papered over those issues. In the fourth, it didn’t.
Kevin O’Connell’s trust in his rookie never wavered. At halftime, the head coach told McCarthy he’d lead the team to a win. That mattered. You could see it in the way the play sheet shifted late: more motion, quicker reads, defined throws to the perimeter, and a couple of keepers to make Chicago’s ends hesitate. The Vikings leaned on tempo without hurrying. They helped the protections with chips and condensed formations. And they got Jefferson moving, which changes every coverage picture.
McCarthy’s background showed up, too. This is the same quarterback who guided Michigan to a national title at the end of the 2023 season. The Vikings drafted him 10th overall in 2024 for nights like this—composure when the game speeds up, control when the crowd gets loud, and the ability to make the one or two plays that swing the outcome.
For all the energy around the Bears’ new era under head coach Ben Johnson, this was a reminder that small mistakes decide close games. Chicago’s defense cashed in with Wright’s pick-six. The offense answered with a balanced drive here and there. But the pre-snap penalties returned, the line couldn’t reset the line of scrimmage in short yardage, and the fourth quarter slipped away.
Jefferson did what stars do—create leverage on critical downs and make tough catches look routine. Jones, in his first season with Minnesota, showed why the Vikings brought him in: reliable hands, burst after the catch, and patience in the screen and checkdown game that kept drives alive. Those two were McCarthy’s lifelines once the playbook got into a rhythm.
Defensively, Minnesota bent in spots but kept the explosives limited after halftime. The Vikings’ edge rush forced Williams to climb or escape, which bought the secondary windows to close. Chicago still found answers on designed movement and quarterback keepers, but the Vikings were cleaner in the final 15 minutes. Field position tilted. So did the game.
- McCarthy: 13/20, 143 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT; 1 rushing TD
- Williams: a passing TD and a rushing TD; team-high 58 rushing yards on six carries
- Swift: 53 yards on 17 carries (3.1 YPC)
- Nahshon Wright: 74-yard interception return TD
- Vikings scored 21 points in the fourth quarter
This is the kind of opener that sticks with a locker room. Minnesota waited a year for McCarthy after that preseason knee injury ended his rookie season before it even started. Patience like that can strain a roster. Monday night repaid it. The Vikings are 1-0 and, more important, they’ve seen their young quarterback deliver when nothing came easy.
For Chicago, the film will be useful. Johnson’s structure is sound—formations stress the edges, motion clears reads for a young passer, and Williams is comfortable operating on the move. The fixable stuff is obvious: cadence discipline, eliminating the drive-killing false starts, and finding a downhill run answer that does not ask the quarterback to be the primary rusher. That is not a long-term plan in the NFC North, where winter turns games into trench fights.
It also felt like the start of a rivalry chapter we will see for years: two first-round quarterbacks from the same draft, operating in the same division, carried by fan bases that expect every week to mean something. Williams didn’t flinch. McCarthy didn’t blink. On this night, the ball bounced the Vikings’ way because their rookie turned momentum into points.
If you’re O’Connell, you love the situational moments most: the red-zone poise, the third-and-medium throw to set up the go-ahead score, the keeper call on the final touchdown when everyone in the building expected another pass. Those are trust snaps between a coach and a quarterback. They don’t always show up in the totals, but they decide prime-time games.
None of this makes McCarthy a finished product. He forced an early throw and learned how quickly NFL corners break on out routes. He took a sack he could have avoided. But the correction was instant, and the decision-making sharpened when it mattered most. That’s what teams look for with young passers: can you make the next drive better than the last one?
Week 1 rarely tells the whole story, but it can tell you who isn’t afraid of the stage. On Monday night, in a stadium that’s chewed up plenty of visiting quarterbacks, the rookie with the rebuilt knee owned the fourth quarter. The Vikings leave with a win. The Bears leave with lessons and a quarterback who still looks like the future. In the NFC North, that’s how races begin.
Write a comment