CHICAGO - The doors to Club Dub, where the Bears find their groove, were seconds away from swinging open to a laser light show and music loud enough you can feel it in your chest.
Then Cody Parkey did what has become an impossible trick turned nightmare for the Bears, something that has been a joke for weeks, a very bad one for the organization. His 43-yard field-goal attempt clanked off the left upright, fell in what appeared to be super-slow motion, banked off the crossbar and then bounced back toward the field of play.
There is no party in Club Dud.
Five seconds remained on the clock. Parkey put his hands on his knees before hanging his head. NBC cameras caught coach Matt Nagy and quarterback Mitch Trubisky expressionless on the sideline, much the same way the crowd of 60,138 at Soldier Field was left after the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles, the sixth seed in the NFC, kneeled down and left Soldier Field with a 16-15 victory in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.
The Bears, who proved naysayers wrong in a major way by not just going from worst to first in the NFC North but posting a 12-4 record, saw their season end by a matter of inches in the cruelest of ways.
It's the sixth time Parkey has nailed an upright and missed a kick this season. There was an inconsequential missed field goal the week before in Minnesota and two field goals and two extra points that each nailed an upright in the 34-22 victory over the Lions at Soldier Field on Nov. 11.
It's mind-boggling that six of Parkey's 11 misses for the season (eight field goals, three extra points) hit an upright. Former Bears kicker Robbie Gould, who posted a photo of his sons rooting from a suite in the northeast corner of Soldier Field, probably couldn't do that if you gave him a bag full of balls and most of an afternoon to his the yellow uprights. Gould is 82 for 85 with the Giants and 49ers since being cut by the Bears just before the start of the 2016 season.
"One of the worst feelings in the world," Parkey said. "Continue to put things in perspective. Continue to just put my best foot forward and sleep at night knowing I did everything in my power this week to go make that kick and for whatever reason it hit the crossbar and the upright and I still couldn't do it. I feel terrible."
Parkey made the kick initially on a play that was wiped out as Eagles coach Doug Pederson used his final timeout just before the snap. The ball didn't carry far over the crossbar, and the Bears mascot Staley caught it. On the Eagles sideline, the feeling was Parkey would try to give the next kick more juice.
"He was going to try to do something different," Eagles left tackle Jason Peters said. "He knows he barely made it. That's what he did. He put a little more leg into it, it went up and the wind caught it."
Eagles defensive tackle Trayvon Hester said the second kick "tipped off (my) fingertips" as he rushed alongside Haloti Ngata.
"I thought I didn't get enough of it," Hester said. "I thought it was going to go in. So when I saw it going in, I turned back around and then I heard everybody screaming. He missed it."
The shame of it is the missed kick spoiled a strong outing by Trubisky, who settled in as the game went along, leading a field-goal drive at the start of the fourth quarter when Parkey connected from 34 yards, his third straight make after hitting from 36 and 29 in the second quarter. Then the Bears marched 80 yards on six plays with Trubisky picking on 5-foot-9 rookie cornerback Avonte Maddox. A 22-yard touchdown pass to Allen Robinson (10 catches, 143 yards) staked the Bears to a 15-10 lead with 9:04 remaining, the first go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter for the Bears since Sid Luckman scored one in the 1946 championship game, according to Pro Football Reference.
Trubisky finished 26 of 43 for 303 yards with no turnovers, an effort that was more than good enough for a victory that would have sent the Bears to Los Angeles to face the No. 2-seeded Rams. The defense picked off Nick Foles twice in the first half, but the Eagles offensive line kept the pass rush off him and Foles hit former Bear Alshon Jeffery for an 11-yard gain on third down on the winning drive. He connected with Golden Tate on an out route on fourth-and-goal from the 2 for the winning touchdown.
The last thing Bears fans wanted to see was the game riding on a kick, as they had been nervous about Parkey most of the season. Why do you think Nagy called an end-zone shot to wide receiver Anthony Miller with only 15 seconds remaining and no timeouts?
Teammates said the right thing when tape recorders and cameras were rolling in the locker room. They had Parkey's back. The missed kick wasn't the only reason the Bears lost. That's true. But a kicker is paid to make kicks and Parkey struggled after signing a four-year, $15 million contract with $9 million guaranteed in March. The annual average of $3.75 million made him the eighth-highest-paid kicker in the league at the start of the season.
He never found his groove, though, not even with midweek practices at Soldier Field for the last four home games.
"I don't think you can write that story," said Nagy, still in disbelief roughly 45 minutes after the game. "Just with how things went this year and how he rebounded, and then for that to happen. It's tough."
As Parkey said, the sun will come up tomorrow. An offseason will commence. With the Bears having broken through as a contender with a young roster, we won't see the massive turnover and huge moves they've made over the last several years. But it's hard to imagine a move won't be made at kicker.
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