Breaking down ‘Santa's Sleigh', the wildest play call of the Bears' season

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The play that resulted in Sunday night's lone touchdown was less than 72 hours old. 

Dubbed 'Santa's Sleigh' by the defensive staff, the playaction pass featured Mitch Trubisky, six offensive lineman, and four defensive lineman. Not a single skills player was on the field. 

Trubisky took the snap, faked an inside handoff to Akiem Hicks -- calling to mind last week's 'Freezer Left' in the process -- and hit offensive lineman Bradley Sowell for an easy two-yard touchdown:

"We needed a play, so they gave it to the playmaker," Sowell said. "It was one of those things that I'm glad Nagy trusts me to do. He tried it with me earlier in the season and got flack for it but gave it back to me and it worked out great."

The other elligble recievers for Santa's Sleigh were Jonathan Bullard, Akiem Hicks, Bilal Nichols and Roy Robertson-Harris. None of them could think of a time where they'd seen that type of formation before. 

"Nah, that's the first one," Bullard said, "It's just exciting. Stuff like that excites the 'D'. The crowd likes it, we like it. We’ve been successful on it. We go in there and run it a few times in practice, get it down pat and we’ve executed the last two weeks.”

Surprisingly enough, Sunday night's touchdown wasn't even the first of Sowell's playing career -- the other came back in 2008, when he was a freshman at Ole Miss. Within the locker room, though, the lineman is known to have some hands.

"I thought it was very impressive. But to everybody else." Nagy said. "Bradley in practice does some unique things for being a big offensive lineman. I mean, that was a complete thumbs up catch. He just looked it in. The ball was up high. That was an unbelieveable catch. Great throw, too."

“It was awesome, and the way he plucked it out of the air," Akiem Hicks added. "I mean, there aren’t a lot of big guys around that can do that — there aren’t a lot of PEOPLE around who can do that. But I thought it was pretty cool."

This week, Sowell -- who plays catch with Khalil Mack before every game -- knew that his number might be called. Matt Nagy tried a similiar play against the Patriots back in October, but it wasn't until breakfast on Sunday when he was told they'd be running it again. 

"He told me this morning at breakfast, 'Hey, it's on, it's primetime, we're calling it'," he added. "I was just like, okay, here we go. Hats off to him -- he's awesome for trusting us and letting us have fun with it."

After appearances in back-to-back weeks, it's clear that the Bears' atypical red zone playcalling has become a point of pride, not to mention a catalyst. 

"It’s cool having a coach that’s willing to do that," Roy Robertson-Harris said. "It shows how fun he is. Not a lot of coaches do stuff like that, so it’s fun to be around a coach that wants to do stuff like that, having defensive players get in on the plays. You know, have fun. We’re not here to be robots, we’re here to have fun. It’s a job, but we’re having fun with it right now.”

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