Tyrique Stevenson Addressed Bears After Viral Fan Video on Jayden Daniels' Hail Mary
Tyrique Stevenson, the Chicago Bears defensive back who was responsible for covering Washington Commanders wideout Noah Brown during Sunday's game-winning Hail Mary as time expired, was caught on video talking trash to Washington fans as the ball was snapped on the final play before running into position.
It was actually Stevenson who tipped the ball that careened back to Brown, giving Washington the 18-15 win, but his responsibility on the play was sticking with the wideout.
On Monday, Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said Stevenson addressed the team about his role in allowing game-deciding touchdown:
Stevenson, to his credit, apologized on social media to his teammates and fans after the game:
Wide receiver D.J. Moore said that he and the other captains planned to further address the situation internally.
"I didn't see it happening during the play," he noted during a weekly appearance on the Mully & Haugh Show. "I've seen it just how everybody else has seen it (on social media). The captains were talking about how we need to really address that. I saw that he put something out that he was sorry, but we've still got to address it as a leadership group in front of the team."
"I don't know (what the punishment will be), that's not up for us to do," he added. "But we can address it as captains, and upstairs will have to do what they're going to do. It's a lesson learned, for sure. He won't do that again. But if you bench him it's just like, that one play—it's a big play—but that one play doesn't define him as a player."
Eberflus, meanwhile, said that the Bears practice their Hail Mary defense but it simply wasn't executed as designed.
"It comes down to that last play and we've practiced that play 100 times since we've been here," he told reporters. "I'll have to look at what the execution was of that, but we have a body on a body, boxing guys out like basketball at the very end. We have one guy that's the rim, that knocks the ball down. We have a back-tip guy that goes behind the pile."
Perhaps just as important as the Hail Mary itself was the play prior, when Jayden Daniels was able to find Terry McLaurin on a 13-yard completion against Chicago's soft coverage. He got out of bounds with two seconds remaining, getting the Commanders into field position for a heave near the end zone.
"Because you're defending touchdown, right? You're defending touchdown there," Eberflus told reporters while discussing his team's soft coverage on the penultimate play. "And them throwing the ball for 13 yards or 10 yards, whatever that is, doesn't really matter. It's always going to come down to that last play."
That is a debatable perspective, given that Daniels' final throw didn't even reach the end zone on its own and certainly wouldn't have from another 13 yards back, but it all would have been a moot point if Stevenson simply handled his responsibilities on the Hail Mary.
