Zavion Thomas 97-Yard Touchdown: Bears Preseason Week 3

Ninety-seven yards. That's not a nice gain. That's the length of the field, basically.

Zavion Thomas took the ball and went. All the way. In the third week of the 2026 NFL preseason, with rosters still being sorted and jobs still being won, he put up the kind of number that makes a front office pause.

Preseason matters less for the scoreboard and more for moments like this — one player doing something that can't be ignored. The 97-yard score was one of the standout plays from Saturday's slate of games, flagged by the NFL itself in its week-three recap. That doesn't happen by accident. When the league's own summary leads with something, it's because the play was legitimately hard to look away from.

If you're not a Bears die-hard, the name might be new to you. That's kind of the point.

Zavion Thomas is a wide receiver whose Pro Football Reference page tells the story of a player working his way up — the kind of profile that's thin on regular-season snaps but getting filled in fast. Preseason is where that changes. It's where guys with limited NFL exposure get a live game to show something.

He showed something.

A 97-yard touchdown is the sort of play that moves a player from the bubble to a real conversation. Coaches watch film. They count yards. They remember who made them look right when they gave someone a shot.

Thomas got a shot. He didn't waste it.

Plays like this don't happen in a vacuum. There's always someone on the other end of it.

Keydrain Calligan was the Titans defender involved in the play. His roster page on the Tennessee Titans site puts him in the same boat as Thomas — a young player in the preseason grind, trying to prove enough to stick.

That's what makes these matchups real. It's not a star getting burned by another star. It's two people fighting for the same thing — a roster spot, a contract year, a phone call that doesn't go the wrong way. When Thomas scored, Calligan had the worst possible version of that moment.

Neither of them is a household name yet. That's exactly why this week matters.

One play doesn't tell you everything. The Bears vs. Titans preseason week 3 highlights give you the wider picture — what else happened, which units looked sharp, which ones looked like they still have work to do.

Preseason week three is traditionally the one that counts most. Starters play longer. Schemes get closer to what you'll actually see in September. So the context around a 97-yard return matters. Was the coverage busted? Was it a clean block? Was it Thomas just being faster than everyone in his way?

The highlight reel answers some of that. What it confirms, either way, is that the play was real. It happened against real opposition in a real game situation. Ninety-seven yards is ninety-seven yards.

You don't get to take that off the tape.

A 12-second clip of a 97-yard touchdown is almost nothing on its own. But the moment it exists on the internet, people start wanting more — who is that guy, who got beat, what else happened in the game.

That's exactly the problem video has always had. The clip plays. You want to follow the thread. But there's no thread built in — just a play button and a dead end.

That's what VidLink is built for. The vidlinks in this clip go somewhere real: a player's full career stats, a roster page, an NFL recap, the full game highlights. Every one of those is a place a viewer actually wants to go in the moment they're watching. VidLink makes that possible without leaving the video. The play is the hook. The links are what makes it useful.