“I think you are going to see somebody come behind (Justin) Fields on a QB sneak and see if they can push the whole pile across the line,” Cris Collinsworth said on NBC’s Week 2 Sunday Night Football broadcast: Bears at Packers.
The Bears had the ball with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, fourth down and inches away from scoring.
But instead of preparing for a traditional QB sneak, Fields lined up in shotgun, five yards behind the goal line. He took the snap and waited for a beat to size up the blocking in front of him. He ran forward, but the hole that the Bears offensive line intended to clear was blocked, and Packers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell stopped Fields just before the goal line. Or at least that’s how the officials saw it.
“There’s going to be a bunch of people in Chicago saying, shotgun, why?” said Mike Tirico. “You need inches!”
Every time a play like this doesn’t work, variations of this same question dominate Twitter timelines and generate a whole lot of sports radio yelling. It’s the easiest play call to question because it’s so counterintuitive. Why intentionally move backward when your offense is so close to scoring?
Bears offensive lineman Sam Mustipher, who was the center for the failed play in Green Bay, laughed when approached about the topic the following week. He’s heard all the questioning and complaining about that play. “That is a phenomenal question,” he said.
In the case of the Bears play, head coach Matt Eberflus challenged the ruling on the field that Fields did not score.
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