The Chicago Bears pulled off an all-time fumble on Sunday. After the Bears' defense kept them in a game that they almost certainly should've lost due to the level of offensive ineptitude that they displayed for most of the day, the offense caught fire.

All of a sudden, Caleb Williams and the Bears offense could not be stopped in the fourth quarter. The No. 1 overall pick produced a pair of touchdown drives — and what should have been a third — to give the Bears a 15-12 lead with just a few seconds remaining in the game.

Instead, the Commanders answered with a miraculous Hail Mary touchdown pass from Jayden Daniels to Noah Brown — their first touchdown of the day — to give Washington a dramatic 18-15 win.

The play before the Hail Mary set everything up. The Bears backed their coverage way up, allowing Daniels to hit Terry McLaurin to for 13 yards to give the Commanders a chance to throw it into the end zone. After the game, Eberflus defended the decision to play the penultimate play so conservatively, according to Chris Emma of 670 The Score.

“It doesn't really matter,” Eberflus said, per Emma. “It's always really going to come down to that last play.”

Of course, the notion that those yards didn't matter is a mentality that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Fans and pundits wasted no time jumping all over Eberflus, including ESPN's Mike Greenberg.

“For Matt Eberflus to say those yards don't matter might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard an NFL coach say in my life,” Greenberg said. “And I've been covering the sport 30 years. Those yards didn't matter? Those yards are the reason the quarterback was able to throw the ball to the end zone. How you become an NFL head coach and can actually let those words come out of your mouth I will never understand.”

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Not only does this loss hurt the Bears on the surface as a game that they feel they should've won, it also is likely to haunt them down the stretch of this season.

The Bears are in the middle of a crowded race in both the NFC North and the NFC Wild Card picture. This loss drops them to 4-3 on the season, which incredibly puts them in dead last in their division. A win to make them 5-2 would have put them in a very good spot moving forward.

On top of that, they lost ground on plenty of potential wild card teams that picked up wins on Sunday, including the Commanders. The Eagles, Flacons, 49ers, Cardinals, and Packers all picked up wins to separate themselves from the Bears.

As the season winds down in a few months, this loss is going to hang over the Bears and their playoff chances as an opportunity that got away from them. There are still plenty of positives to take away from this one, such as the defense's resilience throughout most of the game and Caleb Williams' performance in the fourth quarter, but the Bears will want to flush this one and try to forget about it.