Justin Fields leads the league in something positive.
The Bears quarterback on Sunday threw the longest completed NFL pass this season in terms of air distance traveled. It traveled 59 yards through the air and resulted in a 56-yard completion to Darnell Mooney.
NFL NextGen Stats tracks these things and it was one-quarter yard longer than a pass completed by Jalen Hurts and half a yard longer than one completed by Lamar Jackson.
The only problem with the pass was that it didn’t go for a touchdown in a game when the Bears failed to score one. They wound up with a field goal to cut the deficit to 7-6.
Mooney caught it in the first quarter with a dive before hitting the turf and was still beating himself up a bit on Monday for not getting to the end zone.
“I didn’t get in the end zone on the big, you know, the go ball,” Mooney said.
Mooney was touched down at the Giants 25 by Xavier McKinney who was trailing the play, but the third-year Bears receiver is still beating himself up a bit for not getting up and running after he went to the turf with the catch.
Mooney had beaten Adoree’ Jackson on the play and Jackson also went down to the turf as Mooney did. After the catch, Mooney thought Jackson had touched his foot after he hit the turf with the ball, but realized later he hadn’t.
“I thought he touched me,” Mooney said of Jackson. “I thought he clicked my heel but then, my feet ended up clicking myself, so. …”
McKinney then came running up from behind and touched Mooney down while he was on his turf.
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It’s questionable whether Mooney would have scored if he had known the click on his foot was his other shoe and not Jackson. He was still 25 yards from the goal line and down on the ground. McKinney arrived quickly after Mooney hit the turf with the ball, so it would have been difficult to have caught it, gotten up and ran full speed faster than the Giants tackler.
Mooney sounded a bit like he was in a confessional Monday when talking about the mistakes he made. Apparently he was just in a mood for admitting mistakes as he talked about two routes he didn’t run properly.
On one of those plays, Fields didn’t see Mooney because his receiver ran to the wrong place. Then Fields apparently didn’t have time to throw it even if Mooney had been spotted wide open.
“I think it was more so my miss, just thinking-wise,” Mooney said. “That’s where it becomes like a hassle of just trying to learn the playbook so much.”
Maybe this one was Luke Getsy’s fault for the way he named the play.
The play called was just like the one they had in the old Matt Nagy offense with a similar name. Mooney was supposed to be the right safety on the play, a route determined by the defensive look the Bears got. But he wasn’t there because he ran where last year’s play would have taken him.
Mooney called it a case of “… just me putting 2 and 2 together, I mean, putting 2 and 1 together.”
After a slow start this year, Mooney was relieved to be making a big play on the long catch and to have five receptions for 94 yards.
“But I wasn’t satisfied,” Mooney said. “We didn’t get the win. I didn’t get to do, well, I was somewhat of a playmaker to spark plays or whatnot. But I didn’t do enough to get the win.”
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
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