The Bears thought they knew what look the Lions defense would give them on fourth-and-1 about three minutes into the second quarter.
They were wrong.
“You’re talking about, pre-snap, like, ‘Oh no,’” offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said Thursday. “The way that they lined up [in the past], they lined up differently. Because we’ve done sneaks and we’ve done things against them three times before that.”
Safety Ifeatu Melifonwu had been on the line of scrimmage in the Bears’ previous tush-push attempts against the Lions this season. Sunday, he was standing behind the defensive line.
Just before the snap, Getsy knew the Bears could be in trouble. He said quarterback Justin Fields couldn’t have checked out of it.
“He wouldn’t have known in that particular instance, no,” Getsy said. “That’s on me.”
The Bears could have taken a timeout, but did not.
“The fallback is you have a really good player you’re getting the ball to and you hope that he can go make the play too,” Getsy said.
Fields flipped the ball left to receiver DJ Moore, who was lined up at tailback. He was stuffed for a loss of four yards. The tackler: Melifonwu.
