Michael David Smith ,
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During today’s game against the Raiders, Bears head coach Ben Johnson called the Stumblebum trick play he made famous when he was offensive coordinator of the Lions last year. But today it didn’t work.
The Stumblebum play consists of the quarterback and running back pretending that the ball was fumbled and they’re stumbling to try to recover it, and then throwing deep after drawing the defense’s attention. Johnson called it on a third-and-1 in the second quarter, but the Raiders covered it well, quarterback Caleb Williams couldn’t find anyone open, and the pass was incomplete.
Asked after today’s game if the play was Stumblebum, Johnson answered, “Yeah,” and then explained his reasoning behind calling it.
“We have a group of guys who come up with plays, and we felt like that could take advantage of something we saw,” Johnson said. “We were really in two-down territory in my mind at that point anyway, I so I knew we were going to go for an explosive play on that one, and if we didn’t get it we were going to go for it on the next one. It happens sometimes. That’s the cost of doing business. Some of them hit, some of them don’t.”
Williams confirmed he was trying the same Stumblebum that Lions quarterback Jared Goff turned into a touchdown pass last season, but credited the Raiders for being ready for it.
“It was a fake stumble,” Johnson said. “They did a great job on defense.”
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