When Cody Parkey lined up his 43-yard field goal attempt in the final seconds against the Eagles, George McCaskey had two thoughts.
“I was thinking, ‘If we make it, the family’s going to go crazy,’” the Bears chairman said Thursday in a sit-down interview with the Sun-Times. “If we don’t make it, I need to go down to the locker room and thank our players.”
He had to do the latter.
“For me, and I’m sure for other Bears fans, every other field goal attempt appears to go in slow motion,” McCaskey said. “That one appeared to be in surreal, slow motion.
“The upright and then the crossbar. It was almost like one of those cartoons where the ball is wobbling on the crossbar, deciding which way it’s gonna go over.”
Asked whether he was stunned, he nodded.
“That’s probably the best word,” he said. “Stunned.”
The same could be said for his mom, Virginia.
“She, like everyone else in our family, was, and is, disappointed,” he said. “Like I said, I think in time, we’ll look back on 2018 as a great season. And hopefully the success we had and the way it ended, will serve as a catalyst for success in 2019 and beyond.”
Asked about Parkey’s appearance on the “Today” show, he demurred. Nagy said last week that it wasn’t a team-first move.
“Cody’s a great guy,” McCaskey said. “I was impressed, even in the postgame interviews, he’s a standup guy.
“I dunno what went into how it was that he came to be on the ‘Today’ show. Matt had more information on that than I did.”
