A flea flicker that results in a touchdown requires near perfect execution from all 11 offensive players.
First, running back D'Andre Swift must field the pitch in the backfield, run forward, then quickly toss it back to quarterback Caleb Williams.
"Feel like I shot a free throw," Swift said on his toss back to Williams. "The ball was high. I'm glad Caleb made it work. That would have been on me if he didn't."
Williams rebounded the free throw just fine.
Step 1, complete.
Still, Swift and the offensive line would need to block the Cowboys pass rush long enough for Williams to reset and launch the ball downfield.
"You've just got to hold up as long as you can," left tackle Braxton Jones told ChicagoBears.com, "and trust the protection, and trust the call, and trust that everyone's gonna do their job. There was a little bit of help from Swifty with me on that, too, which was great on his part, and I appreciate that."
The ball left Williams' hand right as five Cowboys defenders crashed the pocket.
Step 2, done.
Now, it's up to Williams. He needed to immediately fire the ball as far as he can upon getting it back to rookie receiver Luther Burden III.
"I think it's God-given ability, I guess, to be able to get it out that fast," Williams said. "Just a belief and confidence in Luther being down there … I thought 'just throw it out there as far as I can and let Luther go make the play.'"
Step 3, in the books.
The fourth step comes down to the receiver, who has two key jobs. It starts with what Williams called "lulling the DBs and safeties to sleep" at the line of scrimmage by selling a run play before taking off, which requires pristine timing.
"Coach told us all week, three count," Burden said, "so I was counting for three seconds in my head. 'One, two, three, go!'"
Even if everything up until this point goes right, the final steps are the most crucial — catching the football and finding the end zone.
That, however, came naturally for Burden. As Williams let it fly, Burden didn't just see the ball.
"I think I saw the touchdown when the ball was in the air," Burden remarked.
Jones, however, saw nothing until Burden was marching into the end zone.
"Honestly, as soon as I was going to finish my guy, Caleb had thrown the ball up," Jones added. "I didn't really see it as the sequence happened, but I just turned around, and Luther's catching it. I was like, 'that's amazing.'
"One play on one drive."
The 65-yard touchdown pass — which traveled 62.1 yards in the air, the longest completion in the NFL this season and the longest of Williams' career, per Next Gen Stats — put the Bears up 14-3 with 4:20 left in the first quarter and was a giant contributor to the their 31-14 win over Dallas at Soldier Field Sunday afternoon.
The flea flicker also served as a pair of firsts. It marked Burden's first career touchdown — a highlight of the rookie's 101-yard performance — as well coach Ben Johnson's first successful trick play this season.
"It was a great play call by coach," Burden added. "Great protection by the O-line, great ball by Caleb. It was a highly-executed play."
The Bears offense repped the flea flicker all week in practice. Williams said he underthrew Burden a couple times at first but promised the rookie he wouldn't need to slow down. Jones added that he believed Swift and the O-line executed the protection well in practice. Williams trusted that as well.
"Just building the belief and confidence with the guys, just communicating with them," Williams said. "I told Luther, 'you won't outrun me in the game, just run.' They did a great job, the O-line. The flea flicker is a really long play. So, for them to be able to hold up and be able to allow D'Andre to toss the ball back to me – it did a free throw kind of floater thing. After that, just let it rip and let Luther go make a play."
As Williams, Swift, Burden and the line continued to work through the play in practice, Johnson's trust in them continued to grow.
"Obviously, [Johnson] felt comfortable enough to roll it over to the game plan," Jones said. "I'm glad he got it off the sheet, and it ended up being great for us."
The flea flicker was just one of the four touchdown passes Williams threw in Sunday's victory — tying the quarterback's career high — but executing such a complex, yet rewarding play sparked an Bears team that was already hungry going into Sunday's game.
While the flea flicker itself was exciting, achieving the ultimate goal of getting the win Sunday was all that mattered to the Bears.
"We needed it bad, especially the way we started," Swift said. "Coming back home, against a good opponent and we show up like that. I feel like we played better complementary football, all three phases. So, we gotta take this momentum and run with it. Go back to work on Wednesday and go 1-0 next week."
