DJ Moore and Caleb Williams work at finding same spot on same page

"I felt like we were doing extra in camp to get on the same page."

The play when Williams didn't see Moore and the Bears receiver put up his hand was a play that needs correction, whether it was an example of them being on different pages or not.

"It wasn’t designed," offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. "He’s (Moore) running an out cut, he felt himself in space and sometimes guys that are football players and they feel that and they’re putting their hand up.

"Obviously, people look at it and say ‘hey, they’re not on the same page,’ and we weren’t in that case. But that’s something that we looked at and it’s getting corrected. Obviously we’ll be better for that moving forward."

Doyle didn't fix any blame on the play but admitted Moore essentially ad-libbed.

"If the quarterback is in his rhythm, he’s expecting you to be in a certain place and so we’re saying, 'hey, that’s where we gotta go,'" he said. "If you end up, 'hey I’m wide open,' early in the route, you can fire that hand up and tell him early in his drop that I’m running to space here.

"But that’s one of those things where we’ve just got to get those two guys on the same page. Really, the correction is across the board for the whole offense. It’s good for everybody to see that and how we want to handle that in the future."

So apparently they're not quite synched up as they'd like.

Another play tested whether the two are on the same page in another sense. It was a play very late on the way to the final TD the Bears scored. Both took a beating on the pass, Williams after throwing it over the middle and Moore after going up to get it in the middle of the secondary. Despite the incompletion, the Bears gained 15 yards on a roughing-the-passer play.

Moore showed up on the injury report after the hit but was cleared and participated at practice the last two days.

"What did it feel like? It felt like I got hit by a car," Moore said. "In the moment, I couldn’t really breathe. I kinda got up but I couldn’t really get up. I went back down and couldn’t breathe.

"I got hit in my side. I’m cool now, though."

There was no complaining about being hung out to dry on the pass or by Williams on Moore possibly not being where he needed to be and when.

"It was just the safety made a good play from the other side of the field, coming in and jarring the ball loose and torturing my body," Moore said. "But it’s all right.

"Me and Caleb talked about it and I said that football is football. You really can’t predict what’s going to happen on stuff like that, so it is what it is."

A year ago when there seemed to be a bit of distance between the two all season, they might not have drawn this conclusion.

They do now, with coach Ben Johnson telling them they both need to get on the same page.

So they work toward getting on the same words on the same line on the same page.