A year after the play that defined his second season with the Chicago Bears, cornerback Tyrique Stevenson revealed that he still feels the impact of the reaction after his participation in the “Hail Mary” pass against the Washington Commanders.
It was tough. It hurt. That’s the best way to explain it. It just hurt to be a football player and have one of those mistakes that are going to persist. Even when my son grows up, I’ll have to explain it to him.
The Bears were seconds away from beating the Commanders in Week 8 of last season, after Caleb Williams led the offense to score a touchdown and convert a 2-point attempt with 27 seconds remaining.
In the last play of the game, Stevenson was looking the other way, talking to the fans in the stands at Northwest Stadium.
Realizing the Commanders had initiated the play, Stevenson ran towards the back of the end zone and inadvertently deflected the ball, which fell into the hands of Washington wide receiver Noah Brown.The Commanders won the game 18-15, on their way to the NFC final. Meanwhile, Chicago’s defeat marked the beginning of a streak of 10 consecutive losses, which led to the firing of offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and coach Matt Eberflus.
Stevenson apologized at a team meeting the next day. Although his colleagues supported him for taking responsibility for his mistake, not everyone quickly forgot the failure.
“They gave me their support,” Stevenson recalled on Wednesday. “To be honest, I got some side-eye. But that comes with, as I was saying on the Bears safety’s podcast, Kevin Byard, 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 big plays.
“I put a bad play on video. The best they could do was come up and put their arm around me and say, ‘We got you.’ That’s what they showed me all last year.”
The Bears (2-2, 0-2), coming off a bye, travel this week to face the Commanders on “Monday Night Football.” Since 2013, Chicago has a 2-10 record in games immediately following a bye week, and Stevenson expects that, given their recent history, fans will try to divert their attention from the game once again.
“Returning to a hostile environment, they’re going to do everything they can to destabilize me,” Stevenson said. “The best thing I can do is go out there and show these 10 guys that I’m focused and ready to play.”
The new Bears coach, Ben Johnson, said it’s important for cornerbacks to have “short memories”.
“Sometimes you’re on an island for 12 plays and nothing happens, and then suddenly, something happens,” Johnson said. “If it’s a bad play, you have to be able to erase it, and if it’s a good play, the same. You have to move on to the next one.”
Stevenson’s teammates say that what happened against Washington has nothing to do with the type of player he currently is.
“That ended after that,” cornerback Kyler Gordon said. “He took it, apologized, and I feel like from then on, it’s been like that: he’s not going to let people create this narrative about him. Go out there, keep doing what I do, and I feel like that’s what he’s going to focus on every week.”
While Stevenson reflected on the amount of change he has experienced professionally and personally since Week 8 of the 2024 season, which included the birth of his son, Tyrique Jr., he sees the hard lesson he learned on the field as something he can apply to any situation for the rest of his life.
“I definitely appreciate it, because I would never have changed,” Stevenson said. “I was successful with my way of thinking and what I was doing at the time. And I felt that with that situation, I was just preparing myself to grow and mature and be able to establish any situation that comes with this game… and be able to stand firm and look these men in the face when things don’t go the way I want.”
