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Chicago Bears wide receiver Marc Mariani returns a kick Sunday during the first half of an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis. In the fourth quarter, Mariani returned a kickoff 67 yards, his longest return since joining the Bears in November.
The Chicago Bears didn't win their last game of the 2014 NFL season. But former Havre Blue Pony great Marc Mariani certainly gave them a chance.
In the fourth quarter of Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings, the Bears were struggling, trailing 13-6, and in need of a spark. And Mariani provided it as he took a kickoff from three yards deep in the endzone, and 67 yards later, he had the Bears in scoring territory.
The return was the longest of Mariani's comeback season, which included the final six games of the year. He wound up with 88 kickoff return yards in Chicago's 13-9 loss to the Vikings, and it gave him 510 yards on kickoffs this season. That stat nearly doubled the Bears' output from their first 10 games of 2014.
Mariani didn't return any punts Sunday, but seven punt returns with a long of 16 yards for the season, a season in which the former Montana Grizzly two-time All-American found himself back playing on NFL Sunday's for the first time in three years.
"Second chance is the wrong wording. It's just a huge opportunity," Mariani said in a recent interview. "Being back out here during the regular season, not the preseason, means a lot for me personally and means a lot going forward. I have a lot to prove and I've had a lot to prove. It's easy to say over the phone and in interviews that I'm healthy, but I want to prove that I'm healthy. I have to show people that I'm healthy."
Mariani will now go into his first offseason with the Bears. He signed a two-year contract with Chicago back in November, after being released by Tennessee in August. And though he has shined with the Bears, turning around a return game that was one of the worst in the league before his arrival, Mariani knows the drill moving forward.
"I have something to prove every single day," he said. "There's not a day I don't walk into any building, this building, Tennessee or anywhere else, where I don't have a chip on my shoulder," Mariani said. "The day I lose that chip is when I need to start thinking about what's next."
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