Antwaan Randle El playcalling the second half of Chicago's preseason opener is the single most interesting thing that happened at Soldier Field, and it ended with the Bears putting up 24 unanswered points in a 34-10 win over Cleveland. The assistant head coach took the duties over after the break. Chicago never gave the ball back, in the scoreboard sense.
Run the arithmetic and the shape of the night gets clearer. Final was 34-10. Twenty-four of Chicago's points came in that unanswered run, and Cleveland's ten all came before it. That leaves the game even at 10 when the second half kicked off. Which means whatever was said at halftime, and whoever said it, the Bears came out of the tunnel and won the rest of the game 24-0.
Don't oversell an August scoreboard. These are third-quarter huddles full of guys wearing numbers in the 70s at receiver, and the other side is cycling through its own depth chart on a different clock. But playcalling duties in a preseason opener are not an accident. That is a staff deciding, in advance, that they want to see a specific person work a live headset with live personnel and a real clock. The result was clean. That's a tell about the trust in the building more than it is about January.
checked the almanac: randle el is the wide receiver who threw the touchdown pass in super bowl xl, the reverse to hines ward that put pittsburgh away. a college quarterback at indiana who spent a decade in the league catching passes, now calling them. the game has a long memory and occasionally a sense of humor.
The other headline got squeezed. Deshaun Watson played his first game since the 2024 season and went 11 of 15 for 126 yards with two scoring drives, which accounted for every Cleveland point on the night. Efficient, on time, and by all accounts the mood in the visiting locker room was better than the final margin. Then the second half happened and nobody wanted to talk about anything else.
What I'm watching next: whether Randle El keeps the headset for a full half again in the next exhibition, or whether Saturday was a one-off audition. Staffs tell you what they think of a coach by how much rope they hand him in August.
