Courtney Cronin
LAKE FOREST, Ill. – A year removed from the costly play that defined his second season with the Chicago Bears, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson said the backlash he received for his role in throwing a Hail Mary pass against the Washington Commanders “still hurts.”
“It was tough,” Stevenson said. “It hurt me. That’s the best way I can explain it. It just hurt me to be a football player and to have made one of those mistakes that will persist. Even when my son grows up, I have to explain that to him.
“It really hurts. But just use it as fuel.”
The Bears were seconds away from beating the Commanders in Week 8 last season after Caleb Williams led the offense down the field to score a touchdown and convert a 2-point attempt with 27 seconds left.
When Washington lined up for the final play of the game, Stevenson was facing the opposite direction while chewing out the fans in the stands at Northwest Stadium.
Once Stevenson realized Commanders had snapped the ball, he sprinted toward the back of the end zone and inadvertently tipped the ball into the hands of Washington receiver Noah Brown.
The Commanders won 18-15 en route to reaching the NFC Championship Game. Chicago’s loss, meanwhile, marked the first of 10 straight for the Bears, who fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and coach Matt Eberflus along the way.
Stevenson apologized during a team meeting the next day. Although he was supported by his teammates for owning up to his mistake, not everyone was quick to get over the mistake.
“They were supportive,” Stevenson recalled Wednesday. “To be honest, I’ve gotten some sideways looks. But that comes with, like I said on (Bears safety Kevin Byard’s) podcast, this is what we do for a living. This is who we are in some cases. And the best thing we can do is go out there and make great plays.
“I put a bad play in the movie. The best thing they could do was come and put their arms around me and say, ‘We got you.’ That’s what they showed me all last year.”
The Bears (2-2, 0-2), after a bye, travel this week to face the Commanders on “Monday Night Football”. Since 2013, Chicago has gone 2-10 in games directly following a bye week, and Stevenson expects that, given its recent history, fans will try to turn away from the game once again.
“Coming back into a hostile environment, they’re going to do their best to shake me up as much as they can,” Stevenson said. “The best thing I can do is come out here and show these 10 guys that I’m locked in and ready to go.”
New Bears coach Ben Johnson said it’s important for cornerbacks to have “short memories.”
“Sometimes you’re on an island for 12 games and there’s no action waiting for you and then all of a sudden something shows up,” Johnson said. “If it’s a bad piece, you have to be able to erase it, and if it’s a good piece, same thing. You have to move on to the next one.”
Stevenson’s teammates say what happened against Washington has no bearing on the type of player he is now.
“It ended after that,” cornerback Kyler Gordon told ESPN. “He understood it, apologized, and I feel like from that point on he’s like that, he’s not going to let people create this narrative about him. Go ahead, keep doing what I’m doing, and I feel like that’s what he’s going to focus on every week.”
As Stevenson reflected on the amount of change he’s experienced professionally and personally since Week 8 of the 2024 season, which included the birth of his son, Tyrique Jr., he views the hard lesson he learned on the field as one he can apply to any situation for the rest of his life.
“I really appreciate that, because I would never have changed,” Stevenson said. “I had success with my mindset and what I was doing at the time. And I felt like with that situation, it just prepared me to grow and mature and be able to define any situation that came with this game…and be able to stand up and look those men in the face when things weren’t going the way I wanted them to.”
