by Rich Cohen
In previous years, after the Bears played their last game, a melancholy settled over everything like a cloud. It marked the beginning of the true winter, a dark stretch that did not end until March or April, a season of ice, in which the sun was off in another country. But in 1986, the Bears kept on winning. The Tribune ran an editorial: “What have the Bears done for Chicago? They have given us something to hope and cheer for in January, the time when ordinarily that bleak postholiday depression sets in and all we have to look forward to are subzero temperatures, blizzards and watching our cars rust. This January, cabin fever has been replaced by Bears fever.”
In Chicago, 1986 was the year without a winter.
* * *
The Bears, having the best record in the NFL, earned a bye in week one of the playoffs, jumping directly to the second round. On January 5, 1986, they played the New York Giants. For Ditka, the big challenge was Lawrence Taylor, LT, the Giants’ All-Pro outside linebacker. Many consider him the best ever to play the position. He was a disruptive force, fast and hard-hitting. He set up a few feet off the line, outside the tackle. When the quarterback dropped back, LT was coming from the blind side. If he got by the left tackle, he could shut down Payton and concuss McMahon. He could tip over the king. Before the Bears did anything else, they had to solve LT.
The Bears have a tradition of playing dirty, playing right on the line, that goes back to Halas. Barely legal is legal, which is how they dealt with Taylor. On the second or third series, as McMahon dropped back, Dennis McKinnon, a Bears wide receiver who was just the opposite of Willie Gault—tough instead of fast, he never flinched—sprinted downfield, seemingly following a deep pattern. Taylor forgot McKinnon as soon as he vanished from his peripheral vision, focusing instead on McMahon’s eyes: Where’s he looking? Where’s he gonna throw? Once forgotten, McKinnon raced at Taylor from his blind side, lowered his helmet, and launched at the big man. It’s a play feared by linebackers, a play many have tried to get banned: the crackback block. Delivered just right, it can end a career. Even a giant of a man is perched on very human knees.
McKinnon’s crackback block—Taylor believed it had been ordered by Ditka—did not end LT’s career, or even knock him from the game, but it did infuriate him. He lost his focus as he lost his temper. He began to look over his shoulder, wondering if some receiver was closing in for another crackback. When LT should have been hitting, he was thinking about getting hit. He’d gone from hit-or to hit-ee. At one point, he stood before the Bears’ bench screaming at Ditka. He told Giants’ linemen to hold Payton, Stand him up so I can finish him. The Bears did not have to worry about LT because LT took care of himself. Asked what the team had done to contain the great Lawrence Taylor, Ditka said, “Knocked the shit out of him.”
It was 14° at kickoff, but the wind made it feel colder. It came from the lake in twenty-five-mile-per-hour gusts. It was nasty. The network broadcast a helicopter shot of Soldier Field. It was white as ice. The lake was blue. Ditka paced the sidelines in an old-time Bears jacket, the sort worn by college lettermen, a winter cap, sunglasses. Giants quarterback Phil Simms spent much of the afternoon on his back. New York’s star runner, Joe Morris, went fourteen yards on his first run but never did much after that. In the end, he gained thirty-two yards on twelve carries. When he left in the second quarter, he was gripping his head. “We were hitting him so hard he said he got a migraine so he did not have to play,” Dave Duerson told a reporter. “He didn’t want to carry that rock.” The camera zoomed in on Hampton’s hands. They were wrapped in tape, and blood showed through like a steak through butcher’s paper. Each finger was mangled, proof of his commitment. For stretches, the game seemed to return to football’s origins: it was mob ball, where anything is permissible as long as the fool holds the dingus. When the Giants missed a field goal, Ditka did a triple fist pump. He chewed his gum like a fiend.
The sequence that broke the Giants came in the opening quarter. First Joe Morris was tackled in the backfield. Then Phil Simms was knocked down just as he got rid of the ball. Then Simms was dropped for a twelve-yard loss by Dent. After starting on the 35-yard line, the Giants ended the series at their own 20. The New York punter set up on the 12. His name was Sean Landeta. He was a twenty-three-year-old rookie. He blew on his hands. He was cold. If you looked closely, you could see confusion in his eyes. You could see his breath, too, a cloud of panic that drifted above Soldier Field. He caught the long snap with brittle hands, took two steps and lofted the ball, setting up for the kick. At the crucial moment, he made the mistake of looking up. The Bears were coming at him jailbreak fashion, howling and waving their arms. If the tightrope walker looks down between buildings, he sees a vortex. The earth drops away and he’s falling. Landeta kicked the ball, but the ball was not there. How strange. He missed it completely. By then, the Bears were over the wall. Shaun Gayle, a cornerback playing special teams, scooped it up at the 5-yard line, took two strides, and was in the end zone. It was the shortest punt return for a touchdown in playoff history.
Dan Hampton (99) leaping over the enemy to get to the quarterback. October 28, 1985
Landeta later claimed the wind had taken the ball, a mystery gust from a mystery system. I met him six or seven years later, interviewed him in training camp before another season with the Giants. He would play forever, or football’s version of forever, taking his final snap in 2005, when he was forty-three. As soon as I identified myself as a Bears fan, he put up his hands in the way of Ferguson and said, “I know, I know, but it really was the wind.”
He was such a nice man, and such a good punter, and so adamant that I believed him. At least until I spoke to the Bears who were on the field that day, all of whom laughed at the mystery wind. “He can say what he wants, but I was there!” Otis Wilson told me. “The wind blew no damn ball. Go back and watch. It’s clear as day. That boy looked up at the wrong time and what did he see? The abyss. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss is looking right back into you.”
The Bears won 21 to nothing. The Giants quarterbacks—plural, because, at some point, another can was opened—were sacked for sixty yards. They gave up more territory than they gained. McMahon threw two touchdown passes and Payton ran for ninety-three yards. John Madden, who announced the game on CBS, called it “the most dominant performance by a team I have ever seen on a football field.”
* * *
A few days before the game, McMahon received a warning. He’d been seen wearing an Adidas headband on the field, which violated the NFL’s agreement with advertisers. In flashing the name of his sponsor, Mac was selling something he did not own: network television time. He was ordered to cease and desist. When he protested, pointing out that he’d been wearing the headband most of the season without complaint, he was told, Yeah, well, things change. McMahon is a true individual, the sort of person who positions himself in opposition to authority by instinct. He does not like being told what to do, especially if it strikes him as arbitrary. If Ditka offered a legitimate criticism, he’d listen. If Ditka Sybilized, Mac flipped him off. If he’d been alive during the Revolutionary War, he would have been in a hemlock tree, picking off redcoats. As coaches in Chicago and at BYU had learned, the surest way to get him to do something was to issue a warning not to. He wore the Adidas headband during the Giants game, proudly, staring right into the camera. Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, levied a $5,000 fine, which would increase if McMahon wore the headband on the field again. It became the story of the week: Would McMahon defy the commissioner, or would he submit?
This controversy was probably good for the Bears; it took the pressure off. As we all focused on Mac’s headband, the team was preparing for the second round against the L.A. Rams. To some, they looked like trouble. They were weak at quarterback but had a player many considered the best running back in the game, Eric Dickerson, big and fast, a challenge to tackle. For several days, reporters wrote about the greatness of the Dick. He had gained 248 yards against Dallas the previous
week. But when asked to comment, Buddy Ryan predicted a bad day for the running back: under 50 yards and multiple fumbles. “He’ll lay it on the ground for us,” Ryan said. “We expect him to lay it on the ground at least three times.” This only fueled the fire, filling the air with nervous talk about headbands and defiance and Miami and comeuppance, and remember what goeth before a fall, and so on and so forth, with each round of reports stoking the old Chicago fear of collapse, and the ’69 Cubs, and how good they looked in ’84, and the ’83 White Sox, and what about “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and the jinx, and My God, Dickerson can fly! until finally, in the way of a strong, calming father, Mike Ditka went on TV and explained the reality of the situation to the hysterical fans. “There are teams that are fair-haired, and teams that aren’t,” he told us. “There are teams named Smith and teams named Grabowski. The Rams are Smith. The Bears are Grabowski.” He went on to explain how the Smiths would be coming to the Grabowskis’ house on Sunday, where it’s mean, where it’s violent, and where, in the third quarter, it’s going to snow.
It was in fact freakishly temperate on game day. Upper twenties, low thirties. When McMahon came out for warms-up, a plug of tobacco in his lip, throwing elegantly, each gesture exaggerated, he was wearing the headband. It portended an act of keen defiance, as Pete Rozelle would be attending the game in person.
The tenor of the day would be established in the first possession: either Dickerson was going to be able to run, or it was over. He was tall and lean, an exclamation point broken free from the page. He wore clear sports glasses, the strappy kind that hold fast and resemble skin-diving gear. He was handed the ball on the Rams’ first play. He went here and there, then ran bang into Fencik, who’d snuck up to the line. Any beginning that includes the safety tackling the star runner in his own backfield can be considered inauspicious. “Here’s Fencik,” said John Madden, “clean, nice guy, good-looking guy, Yale and all that, but when he gets that look in his eyes, it’s Jekyll and Hyde.”
McMahon soon took over, leading the Bears downfield. He got to the Rams’ 16-yard line. The TV camera moved across the stands: a wash of faces, a thousand superfans, a million beautiful mustaches, ten million brawts, a billion links of sausage. He crouched behind center, read the defense, began to shout. He dropped back, looked and looked, spotted something, and took off, feet flying, head high. When McMahon ran, you knew you were seeing something. It was the way he moved, how he carried himself, wild, intoxicated. He went through the defense like a drunk going through a bar—filled with bad intent. He slowed as he crossed the goal line, raised his arms, then handed the ball to Kurt Becker, who spiked it with the joy of a lineman who, on most occasions, remains anonymous.
A moment later, Mac was on one knee on the sideline, grizzled, packed with chew, watching the defense. He was beside a warmer, a blowing machine. He turned and looked at the camera. No Adidas. He was instead wearing a blank headband on which he’d written ROZELLE. A small act of comic rebellion, it hit the city like a starburst. McMahon! Rozelle loved it: selling Adidas was one thing, selling the commissioner was something else. In the world of professional sports, which tends to be humorless, a joke can feel like a revolution. Given a choice between defiance and submission, McMahon found a third way.
The Rams had their best chance in the second quarter. They were moving. They gave the ball to Dickerson. He plowed ahead, vanished, then popped above the pile. He looked pained as he was stood up, driven back, and dropped. It was a violent collision, delivered by Singletary, one of those helmet-shattering hits that make everyone in the stadium groan. Writing about it later, Singletary sounded weirdly sexual: “Oh, what a shot! It was beautiful, orgasmic, a lightning bolt that resulted in a one yard loss. I screamed.
“I imagine kids fantasizing that when Otis or Wilber makes a sack it’s them out there on Soldier Field playing before 60,000 fans,” Singletary added. “Their whole week, their life, is made better, more meaningful, and we have something to do with it. It’s therapy when we win.”
In the course of sixteen possessions, the Rams went three-and-out eight times. They averaged less than two yards a play. Their longest drive went twenty-seven yards. Buddy was wrong. Dickerson did not fumble three times, but he did fumble twice, which will do in a pinch. In the second half, just as Ditka had prognosticated, it started to snow—not regular flakes either, but silver dollars that fell like happy tears. “God, it was beautiful,” Ditka wrote. “… the big slow flakes coming down like in one of those Christmas snow globes, and it was perfect. Bears weather, Bears dominance, Bears success, Bears kicking ass.”
Late in the third, McMahon changed Ditka’s play at the line. You can tell by the way Ditka explodes as Mac drops back, rolls left, then finds Gault in the end zone. Touchdown. Mac races downfield, in search of linemen to head-butt. He walks over to Ditka, who glares, shouts, turns, stalks off. It’s like the moment in the movie when the veteran chews out the flying ace: Yes, it worked, but someday that kind of maverick stunt will get us all killed!
Bill Murray is on the sideline, standing beside the blowers, wearing an iron-man-era leather helmet in the snow. He’s laughing and smiling, as happy as any other fan who’d lived through years of collapse. “I wonder how Murray got on the sideline,” says Madden. “The league office won’t like that. They won’t like McMahon’s headband and they won’t like that, either.” At one point, the camera pulls back to reveal the city skyline. It’s smaller than it is today, half the buildings, a third the size. It’s a jarring image that reminds you that this story is set in the same place George Lucas set Star Wars: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
All the while, you can feel energy building on the defensive side of the ball. It was one of the things that made Buddy’s defense so hard to play: he never did what was expected. With a game in hand, most coaches would shift into a prevent formation, put in the backups, call off the dogs. But Buddy kept blitzing. The blitz has always been a rarity: an aggressive defense might blitz ten times all day. During a game in 1984, Buddy called up eight straight blitzes. He was like that crazy fuck at the roulette table who bets only double zero. A guy like that makes you nervous: either he knows something, or he’s insane.
The Bears kept after Rams quarterback Dieter Brock. Something was going to happen. You could feel it. Then, with two minutes and fifty seconds left, something did. Richard Dent, coming from the blind side, unblocked, running free, crushed the Rams’ QB. Brock’s body, his poor weak human body, folded like a bad musical. The football came loose, bounded away. Marshall picked it up and took off. Just like that, he had men with him: the Fridge and Otis, a security detail racing toward the end zone as the stadium burst. And every beer was spilled. And every brawt was coughed up. And every card was dealt. And every cherry dropped in every slot machine. And every bride said “I do.” “I was ten, fifteen yards behind the play, running like mad, trying to keep up,” Fencik told me. “It was every dream I ever had coming true. It was every game of snowy backyard football going exactly as I’d pictured it. In that moment—my God, I will never experience anything like it again!—I was a player on the field, but, as I was chasing Wilber in the snow, I was a fan, too. I was a fan in a stadium filled with fans, and so happy because the Bears were finally going to the Super Bowl!”
The crowd counted off the last ten seconds: five, four, three …
In Chicago, you come into the street after a game like that and the city is one giant room and everyone is hugging and shouting and going crazy. I never had World War II; I never had V-J day; I was never a sailor and I never kissed a girl in Times Square—but I did have this.
In the locker room, Pete Rozelle presented Virginia and Ed McCaskey with the NFC Championship Trophy, which, in March 1984, had been renamed for George Halas. Payton hugged Virginia as Dick Butkus walked from locker to locker, shaking hands. Ditka got the team together. In an attempt at eloquence, he quoted Robert Frost but mangled it. In mangling it, he wrote his own poem, the song of the ste
elworker’s son who’s gone all the way. “You had to cry watching Ditka after the game as layer by layer Iron Mike began to melt,” Singletary wrote. “He stood in front of us, smoking a cigar, head down, lifting it only to speak. You knew that he was thinking of Papa Bear—that he’d finally re-paid the old man’s confidence. ‘I just want to say, you guys have accomplished something special,’ coach said. Down went the head, the feet shuffled. There were tears in his eyes when he spoke again. ‘There’s a poem,’ he said: ‘We’ve gone many miles, but there’s more to go before we can sleep.’”
16
A BUNCH OF CRYBABIES
Walter Payton, voguing for the press during Super Bowl week, 1986
I arrived in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon. I checked into a motel in Metairie. I was staying with my friend Matt Lederer. Each day, we woke at 11:00 a.m., watched an hour of TV, then caught a taxi to the French Quarter. I was seventeen, in possession of money that I had not earned, decked out in Bears regalia, and filled with the old zipperoo. It seemed like the entire city of Chicago was down there, mingling and exchanging predictions. Everyone had a story: some of us had followed the team for years, remembered Ditka as a player and only wanted to live long enough to see one more championship; some of us were new to the team and believed this is how it would always be; some of us were born in the desert and had known nothing but this wandering life—but all of us fell upon New Orleans like parched rats, gulping down milk and honey.
As soon as the Bears arrived, they were awash in controversy. The first issue had to do with McMahon’s ass, which he had bruised while sliding during the Rams game. “Yeah, I remember it,” said Kurt Becker, who shared a room with Mac in New Orleans. “It’s funny to remember a bruise on another man’s ass twenty-five years later, but it was so disgusting. I couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to. And I want to.” Becker likened the bruise to a map on which different shades of purple denote varying elevations. McMahon believed the bruise could be properly treated only by a Japanese acupuncturist who’d helped him before: Hiroshi Shiriashi. But when Shiriashi turned up for the flight to New Orleans, Mike McCaskey wouldn’t let him on the plane. McMahon used his first Super Bowl Week press conference to denounce McCaskey. It sounds silly, but for several days the main topic of conversation, even among old Chicago guys, was the condition of McMahon’s butt and the effectiveness of non-Western medicine. The story reached its apogee midweek, when McMahon mooned a news chopper.