by Ditka, Mike
Jim McMahon can exhale after Kevin Butler’s fourth field goal gives the Bears their final margin.
Walter Payton led the Bears’ rushing attack against the Vikings.
Enter McMahon. First play: McMahon pass to Willie Gault, 70 yards, touchdown. Second play: McMahon pass to Dennis McKinnon, 25 yards, touchdown. Before he was done, McMahon had completed 8 of 15 passes for a staggering 236 yards, including 43 on another touchdown pass to McKinnon, who accounted for 133 receiving yards.
Still, the Vikings got up off the canvas with a 57-yard touchdown pass from Kramer to Carter, bringing them within reach at 30–24. But Butler finished the scoring with a 31-yard field goal.
Overshadowed by McMahon’s pyrotechnics were 127 rushing yards for the Bears and five turnovers forced by the defense. But the Bears had shown the nation emphatically that they were capable of being a quick-strike team as well as the NFL’s dominant rushing offense behind Walter Payton.
Chicago 33, Minnesota 24
SEPT. 19, 1985, AT THE METRODOME
BOTTOM LINE
His effort off bench is one to remember
KEY PLAY
Jim McMahon’s three touchdown passes in a span of 6:40 in the third quarter.
KEY STAT
Most productive games in the careers of Willie Gault, who caught six passes for 146 yards, and Dennis McKinnon, who caught four for 133.
Chicago Bears quarterback Steve Fuller (4) is brought down by Minnesota Vikings cornerback Willie Teal after picking up three yards on a carry in the first quarter on September 19, 1985.
Remembering ’85
GARY FENCIK
No. 45, safety
“Ditka said that if we ever won the Super Bowl, people would remember you forever. I guess we’re in the forever stage.”
“I remember the first time we met Mike in an off-season camp in Phoenix. He basically told us for the first time—and this was my third head coach with the Bears—that our goal wasn’t just to get to the Super Bowl, but it was to win it. But he said that ‘half of you won’t be there when we get there.’ If you look at the roster, there was a two-thirds turnover from the time he gave that speech to the time we won it.”
“I give Mike a lot of credit because who today would come in as a head coach inheriting a defensive coordinator who was hired by the president/founder of the club? That was a delicate situation. I don’t think Buddy [Ryan] did anything to make that easier.”
“I’m a huge fan of Buddy’s. It was an honor to play in that defense.”
“People always talk about how coaches discipline teams. Great teams discipline themselves.”
“Walter Payton was such a leader that if you had people who came in and thought they were the next big thing, not that Walter said anything, but just by the way he conducted himself, I think he humbled you into appreciating what he did.”
“I think of the great moments being beating Dallas 44–0, which for me was the first time that I had ever beaten the Cowboys in any preseason, regular season, or postseason game. I was in my 10th year.”
“I felt pretty good coming off the field after New England’s first field goal in Super Bowl XX, but there was something up on the scoreboard that basically said that 19 out of 20 teams that score first win. And I went from feeling pretty good to feeling like a Chicagoan. Growing up in Chicago, you can remember every good moment in sports because there have been so few.”
“My dad was a basketball coach. I loved hoops. My mom attended all of my sporting events for myself and all of my brothers and sisters and knitted. So we had a lot of knitted sweaters when we were growing up.”
“My dad was an assistant principal of a high school, so I think that probably speaks for itself what the academic expectations were. I knew I wanted to enjoy football, but I was looking for something bigger, and Yale is a pretty impressive place when you visit it.”
“I’m really glad I went to business school at Northwestern. My first two classes were accounting and statistics, and we’re coming back from beating the Raiders, and I’m studying for a final the next day, and everybody else is drinking beer and playing cards. I’m like, ‘Why did I start business school during the football season?’”
“A lot of people still continue to confuse Doug Plank and me. I had someone call me Doug Fencik. I don’t even shake my head anymore. I just recognize the compliment.”
“Best piece of advice I ever got was: Make sure the door you go into has two doors going out.”
chapter IV
No Saints Here
As the 1985 season approached, the Bears were evolving into a team with as much personality as football talent. It was a good thing Platteville was far away from major civilization, because there was a sense that Ditka’s odd crew might not have withstood close scrutiny from discreet society or perhaps even the law.
Second Street was the name of the Platteville lane with the bars frequented by the Bears after hours. Players could do almost anything, according to Ditka rule, as long as they didn’t get arrested or hurt. Pranks and acting crazy were fine, as long as nobody blew out a knee, ripped a hammy, broke a bone. There is a photo taken during spring practice before the team left for Platteville, and it shows the dynamic backfield tandem of fullback Matt Suhey and tailback Walter Payton getting set before a play. The interesting part is that Payton has the startled Suhey’s gym shorts waistband in his hand, pulling it down low and back like a slingshot. Ditka didn’t care. All he wanted was to win.
Platteville is Platteville, you know what I mean? The first couple years we’d played in Lake Forest, and there were too many kids and mothers and all that around. Hangers-on everywhere. I thought we could bond better up in the boondocks. I know the guys went out at night. They had fun, and that was okay. They weren’t a bunch of saints. John Madden used to have a coaching philosophy that went like this: be on time, pay attention, and play like hell. And that pretty much sums it up. I know Van Horne almost killed himself on that scooter, but when I was playing, I remember we were running across a field trying to get away from the cops who were chasing us, and a couple of the guys tripped over wires strung between two posts and almost broke their legs in half. That’s football. There’s a time to play and a time to have fun. If it’s all drudgery, I don’t think you can win. I mean, these guys aren’t wimps. They are who they are. Even a stoic guy like Tom Landry, my coach when I was in Dallas, let guys have fun. Actually, he didn’t know what guys were doing. He could have known, but he didn’t want to know. That’s a choice. That was “America’s Team” with this clean-cut image. But the things guys were doing were off the charts. Still, we showed up every day, practiced our butts off, and played like hell on Sundays. That’s what I wanted from my guys.
“Coach, who are you kidding? My philosophy is exactly the same as yours. My philosophy is to make the Bears something special, and to kick people’s asses!”
—Ditka to George Halas
Looking back at all these clippings from 1985, I can see that we were like a three-ring circus. There was something going on every day. I didn’t read the papers back then, so I had no idea how nuts things were. But I know I tried to deflect some of the attention onto me, because I didn’t want the players under any pressure except to go out and play. If the press thought I was an ass, fine. Didn’t bother me. I was on a mission from the moment I took the job.
And the success could have happened sooner. I blew the first game I coached in 1982, up there in Detroit, by not scoring from the 1-yard line, twice! It made me feel bad, but it made Mr. Halas feel a hell of a lot worse. And I wanted to please him. I wanted him to know I was worthy and a Bear through and through.
My first week as coach I gathered everybody together and said, “This is going to be a good news-bad news announcement. The good news is we are going to win the Super Bowl. The bad news is a lot of you who don’t care enough aren’t going to be with us when it happens.” I meant that. We had a lot of selfish guys back in 1982, but I knew the Fenciks
and Paytons and Suheys and Hamptons would be with me.
See, George Halas embodied the Bears, and I wanted to embody them, too. Not many people know this, but in 1978 I wrote Mr. Halas a letter. I was the special teams coach for the Cowboys, and I was no big deal. Maybe I was a little wild. But what I said in the letter was, “We didn’t part on the best of terms when you traded me, but I would love to come back some day, back to Chicago, and be the head coach. I’m not ready yet, but I will be some day. I’ll bring back Chicago Bears tradition and pride. I promise.”
Sid Luckman, the great old Bears quarterback, told me Halas always kept that letter. Sid and Mr. Halas were best friends. See, for me, it was the Bears only. I wanted nothing else. It was my ultimate goal. Just the Bears. That and winning the Super Bowl.
A few years went by, and then after the Cowboys lost to the 49ers in the 1981 playoffs, a really tough game where Dwight Clark made that great catch from Montana in the end zone, Coach Landry called me into his office.
“There’s somebody who wants to talk to you,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“George Halas of the Bears.”
It excited the hell out of me. Tom gave me his blessing, and I got on a plane to Chicago. It was all cloak and dagger there, with Halas’s right-hand man Max Swiatek, his driver and longtime helper, picking me up at the airport and taking me to Halas’s place at the Edgewater Beach condos up on the north side near Lake Michigan. We sat at the kitchen table and he asked me some stuff. I was really keyed up, and I knew it wasn’t him when he said, “What’s your philosophy about football?”
“Coach, who are you kidding?” I said. “My philosophy is exactly the same as yours. My philosophy is to make the Bears something special, and to kick people’s asses!”
He just nodded. He looked right at me. He said, “Okay, I’m going to give you a three-year contract to be our new head coach. One hundred thousand dollars a year. That’s it.”
I said, “No.”
He was stunned. “What do you mean? You can’t do it?”
“No,” I said. “I will do it. But I have to have a 15 percent raise each year.”
I thought I was really being cool. Hell, that would still make me one of the lowest-paid coaches in the league. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about money. Nobody else had offered me anything. It was just something to show I was my own man.
So he gave me the deal—$100,000, $115,000, $130,000—and we shook hands, signed the contract, and that was that. But what I really wanted was his respect. I meant it when I wrote that letter. I felt the Bears were my destiny. And George Halas was the Bears. His son Mugs Halas had died, and that left George’s only other child, Virginia, and all her children as heirs to the family business.
But I knew deep inside he believed in me, the outsider, the old tight end. I think he believed that I was a lot like him. When he was lying in the hospital a year or so later, there were only two people he wanted to see—his secretary, Ruth, and me. Nobody else. I talked to him about the players we had just drafted. I told him he’d like Covert, that he was kind of similar to old-time star Joe Stydahar, and the Old Man liked that. He was very sick at that time, but he told Ruth to give me a special bottle of champagne he had. “Give this to Mike,” he told her. “For when they win the Super Bowl.”
It makes me sad because the bottle is out there on the wall, in a place of honor in my restaurant, and he wasn’t alive when we opened it.
But I didn’t know what was going to happen. I told the players they deserved to win it all, but nobody could foresee the future.
We came out for the opening game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and we felt we were in a good position. Platteville had been hot and tough, and Buddy had his defensive unit in good shape from all of the running they did. My guys, the offense, were ready to go, too, especially since McMahon was back for his first start since the kidney injury the previous November. I figured beer must have been part of his cure. Maybe it filtered out the bad stuff.
We were favored by a touchdown or so, partly because the Bucs were playing in Chicago, partly because our defense was so good, and partly because their star defender, Lee Roy Selmon, was out. We’d set the NFL sack record the year before, so everybody was sure our defense would dominate.
But it didn’t. We gave up 28 points in the first two quarters, over 300 yards in the game, and were down 21–7 early and then 28–17 at the half. It was September 8, and it was hotter than blazes on our artificial turf at Soldier Field, something like 137 degrees at turf level. Maybe that’s why the fans booed us when we came off at the half, because they were roasting. But I don’t think so. We weren’t playing as a unit. This offensive and defensive split wasn’t good. We had to be one.
Gary Fencik Remembers ’85
Training Camp at Platteville, Wisconsin
“What a contrast Platteville was to the old days. Before Mike came in as coach we always practiced in Lake Forest, which was in the far north suburbs of Chicago, but still near the city. Going up to Wisconsin isolated the team from just about everything. It made the bonding more pleasurable.
“There we were in the middle of nowhere and we had bicycles and scooters to get around. It was funny seeing everybody zipping back and forth that way. Keith Van Horne is 6’7” or 6’8”, and well, if he’d been a shorter guy he would have been decapitated when he ran into that chain or rope or whatever it was. Scooters weren’t the smartest things for us to have, but we used them to get to town to have some beers after every practice.
“Training camps can be tough and hot, so the trainers had all these big tubs filled with ice water by the field. After practice guys would climb in. It sounds horrible, but, man, did it feel good. I always used them. I remember Fridge being in his tub and there wasn’t much room left for the ice cubes.
“The worst part about Platteville was driving back through all that country to Chicago. The cops were just waiting to nail everybody.”
Fortunately, McMahon was on target, and Payton was running the way he could. Walter carried the ball 17 times for 120 yards, and Jim completed 23 of 34 passes for 274 yards and two TDs. He also ran for two scores and didn’t hurt his kidney in the process, for which I was thankful. It was nice the offense bailed out our defense for once. In fact, that helped us all, because, like I said, there was some tension between the two sides. And it was nice that McMahon got NFC Player of the Week honors for leading the charge. But it wasn’t a game to be thrilled about. I was proud that our offense proved it could strike back. But we all knew we needed that D if we were going to go anywhere.
If we had lost that game, people would have said, “I told you so! You bums were nothing but a flash in the pan! San Francisco sucked you dry!”‘
I thought back to the previous three years I’d been coaching the Bears. At the beginning we were losing all of these games we should have won. It worried me. But then we had Bob Avellini playing quarterback, and he was one of the biggest screw-ups I’d ever met. I had no idea what he’d do.
We’re playing out in Seattle in 1984, and Avellini is starting because McMahon—guess what?—is already out with an injury. We’re ahead, 7–0, Payton’s averaging over five yards a carry, and it’s second and 4, and we have a nice play called. Oh yeah, we’re undefeated at the time—3–0. Then I hear Ed Hughes, our offensive coordinator, standing next to me, say, “Oh, no.”
“What, Ed?” I yell.
“The son of a bitch is audibleing!”
Avellini audibles to a hitch, from a fly pattern with max protection, and the Seattle cornerback picks the ball off on a dead run and he’s going so fast in the other direction for a touchdown he nearly breaks his neck when he hits the end zone wall. Bob comes out of the game, which we went on to lose, 38–9, and I say—shit, I am trembling—“Bob, why would you do that, son?”
“Well, I thought—”
I was going to kill him. Right there. Tear his flesh off like a jackal. I was so mad my neck veins had veins.
—Ditka on Bob Avellini
“Don’t THINK!” I scream. “Please. Don’t.” Then I add, “Bob, if you ever do that again you will never—ever—EVER—play another down for me! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
He nods.
Then we’re up in Green Bay the next year, and he does the same exact damn thing. I was purple. I was green. I was subhuman.
“That’s it!” I screamed. “You’re done!”
He looks at me and says, “Well, you never liked me anyway.”
“Don’t LIKE you?! You #%&*!@+!!%—!—”
I was going to kill him. Right there. Tear his flesh off like a jackal. I was so mad my neck veins had veins. Everybody was holding me back. I mean, he did the same thing!
Years later we were playing the Vikings up at that indoor roller rink they have in Minneapolis, and Jim Harbaugh was my quarterback. I said before the game, “It’s gonna be loud out there. No audibles. Your linemen can’t hear. I’m not going to put you in position to call a play that won’t work. Okay? Got it?” Harbaugh nodded. Everybody nodded.
In the game we’re beating the Vikings, 20–0, and I have a fly route to Gault called. Up the side-line. Harbaugh audibles to a hitch. Interception! We lose the game 21–20. There are photos that ran after that where I’m getting ready to strangle Harbaugh. I was wrong on the sideline, and I’ve calmed down through the years, and two wrongs don’t make a right. BUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHEN PEOPLE DO THINGS LIKE THAT! Call the damn play!