You could tell early on that Sunday night football was going to be one of those games. San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan felt it right away, as did most fans. Shanahan went as far as to say that he felt like he lost the game when he decided to punt for the second time:
“Yeah. You kind of have a feeling when it’s one of those games, and it felt like it from the beginning, and it didn’t stop. I thought we lost the game when I punted there on fourth-and-seven, hoping to pin them back, and then they cleaned it up in one play. But, we did hold them to a field goal that drive, which was huge. And we went and regained the lead with seven. But some games are like that. Was hoping we would get a turnover to kind of turn it, and we didn’t, but we found a way to still get it done.”
In hindsight, the decision to trust your defense to prevent the Bears from getting into field goal position as opposed to your offense picking up seven yards on fourth down was likely the wrong one. Chicago had moved the ball at will all game.
Not having Upton Stout now meant they could attack your backup nickel with their first-round pick. The odds the Bears would get around midfield, where the Niners punted, were always high, and they wasted little time getting there.
The way the Bears kept answering the 49ers’ touchdowns, and the Niners would answer back, felt like something we had never seen before. That’s because we haven’t. According to the broadcast, for the first time in regular-season history, the game was tied five different times:
7-7
14-14
21-21
28-28
35-35
Brock Purdy’s first pass of the game was the right read, but the result couldn’t have been worse. The offense answered that pick-six with a touchdown drive to tie the game at seven.
After forcing back-to-back three-and-outs, Christian McCaffrey’s 41-yard run put the Niners in position to take another lead, and they did two plays later. However, the Bears scored a touchdown in under two minutes to tie the score at 14.
If you were unsure of how the game would go before, 28 points in ten minutes should have answered all questions about where this game was headed.
A 9-play, 75-yard touchdown was answered with a scoring drive by the Bears that took 1:24 off the clock to tie the game once more at 21.
San Francisco’s best drive of the game followed the Bears’ score by taking nearly nine minutes off the clock and going 15 plays. That made it 28-21, and more importantly, the Bears didn’t score before halftime. Because if they did, we’re talking about a different second half. The Bears scored to begin the third quarter, and we were tied for the fourth time at 28.
Kendrick Bourne jumpstarted the next touchdown drive, before Luther Burden did what he had done all night, even things at 35. That would be the final tie of the game, and the last time Chicago found the end zone in one of the wildest games of the season—eleven combined touchdowns.
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