DETROIT – After a sloppy first half that ended with the Lions scoring a touchdown on a two-play, 91-yard drive, coach Lovie Smith had some choice words for the Bears defense in the locker room Sunday in Detroit.
“He was fired up,” said defensive end Israel Idonije. “He called out the defense. He said, ‘Hey, that’s not us. Let’s go.’ He was very vocal and just let us know that we had to get after it. He was charged up, but we knew. That was an embarrassing first half. That second half we turned it up.”
Backed by a resurgent defense, the Bears turned a 20-14 third-quarter deficit into a 24-20 victory at Ford Field, extending their winning streak to five games. With the win, Chicago (9-3) maintained a one-game lead atop the NFC North over the Packers (8-4), who beat the 49ers Sunday in Green Bay.
Jay Cutler delivered another excellent performance, completing 21 of 26 passes for 234 yards and a 117.0 passer rating. His 7-yard touchdown pass to tight end Brandon Manumaleuna in the right flat put the Bears ahead 24-20 with 8:39 left in the fourth quarter.
“In games like this, you need your special players to be special,” Smith said. “I really thought [Cutler] stood up, stepped up and made play after play.”
The Bears defense made two key stops in the fourth quarter. First, D.J. Moore broke up a Drew Stanton pass intended for Nate Burleson on fourth-and-one at the Chicago 41.
After Manumaleuna gave the Bears the lead, Stefan Logan returned the ensuing kickoff 60 yards to the Chicago 44. But Moore split a sack with Brian Urlacher and later held Tony Scheffler to a three-yard gain on a third-and-19 pass play, forcing a Detroit punt.
The Bears took over after the punt at their own 20 with 5:17 remaining in the fourth quarter and proceeded to run out the clock by picking up four first downs, the final one coming on Cutler’s 16-yard pass to Manumaleuna over the middle to the Detroit 29.
“Defensively, in the second half we challenged the guys to play the way we’re capable of playing as much as anything, and they did that,” Smith said. “They really shut down the Lions that second half of the game. We got our ninth win, we’re in first place, and we feel good about that.”
After allowing 253 total yards and 11 first downs in the first half, the Bears permitted 49 yards and three first downs in the final two quarters to sweep the Lions (2-10) for the third straight season.
“That second half was our defense,” Idonije said. “That first half, I don’t know. But thankfully we left those guys on the field and we don’t want to see that defense the rest of the year.”
Stanton’s 3-yard touchdown run gave the Lions a 7-0 lead with 6:36 left in the first quarter. The score came after Logan had returned a punt 19 yards to the Chicago 38.
Making just his second NFL start because of injuries to Matthew Stafford and Shaun Hill, Stanton completed 16 of 24 passes for 178 yards with 1 TD, no interceptions and a 102.4 passer rating.
After the Bears tied the game 7-7 on Chester Taylor’s 1-yard TD run late in the first quarter, Dave Rayner’s 50-yard field goal gave the Lions a 10-7 lead with 9:31 left in the second period. Matt Forte then capped an eight-play, 83-yard drive with a 14-yard TD run, giving the Bears a 14-10 lead.
It appeared the Bears would take that four-point advantage into the locker room when the Lions took over at their own 9 with :53 remaining in the half. But Jahvid Best bounced outside around right end for 45 yards and Stanton followed with a 46-yard TD pass to Calvin Johnson, giving the Lions a 17-14 lead.
“It was man [coverage], Moore said. “I should have been a little closer to him. When he caught it he had a lot of space to make a move on the safety, and then I got stiff-armed pretty good. I know I’m going to see that on ESPN later on today. It was just a good player making a good play.”
The stunning turn of events left Smith in a sour mood at halftime.
“Upset? Yeah, you could say that,” said the Bears coach. “We weren’t happy about what was happening. The message though was just to play the way we’re capable of playing. I know they were doing some good things, but it’s hard to stomach missed tackles and critical plays, letting a team go over 90 yards in two plays. We should have had them stopped. But again, we liked the way the guys finished.”
The Bears defense immediately responded to their coach’s challenge. The unit forced the Lions to settle for a field goal after Detroit had recovered a Cutler fumble at the Chicago 9 on the second play of the second half. Rayner’s kick made it 20-14, but the Bears were still within one score.
After Robbie Gould booted a career-long 54-yard field goal, Cutler connected with Manumaleuna for the go-ahead touchdown as the Bears rallied to beat the Lions in the fourth quarter for the second time this year.
The Bears clearly weren’t as sharp against the Lions as they were in winning last Sunday's showdown over the Philadelphia Eagles. But battling back to escape with a victory in Detroit was just as satisfying.
“Coming off the [big] win over Philadelphia, it’s easy to have a letdown game,” Cutler said. “This team is veteran enough to know what type of game we were in for. It was going to be a tough one. It was going to be a fight. It was going to be four quarters.
“We weren’t going to come in here and just blow anybody’s doors off. This kind of knocks us back down a little bit. It gets our feet back on the ground. But every game is a tough one in the NFL and we’ve got to prepare like it.”
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