The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest

by Ditka, Mike

  I believe in loyalty. I thought about all that because we were playing without Bell and Harris, and people were saying the defense really missed them. It actually was tragic that they weren’t with us, in a way. But you can’t move on unless better players replace lesser ones, and the guys you have replace the guys you don’t have. Loyalty only goes so far. Character only goes so far. Football is played with talent and speed and mean.

  And I think Bob Thomas did okay, too, probably better than any of us. He went back to school, got his law degree, and now he’s the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

  Make no mistake about it—we were a talented team. Hell, we had 10 first-round draft picks on the club—a lot of them from Jim Finks and some from Jerry Vainisi and me. In the entire league, only the Packers had more first-round guys with 11.

  One of our first-round guys, Mike Singletary, had a hell of a game, too. He had three sacks and an interception. What a competitor he was. What a student of the game. Another first-rounder, William Perry, our rookie 315-pound or 300-whatever-pound defensive tackle from Clemson, didn’t get in much. But before the game the Patriots’ center, Pete Brock, was asked about him. “That’s an all-day sucker!” he said. But Buddy wasn’t using Perry much. Big Bill already had his nickname, “The Refrigerator,” and I felt we ought to plug that appliance in somewhere. Things were going through my mind. I was daydreaming and thinking and calculating.

  Mostly, I was happy we got out of this one pretty easily. McMahon’s back was a little stiff, so we rested him at the end and put in Fuller.

  But there was no time to sit around and feel good about being 2–0. The NFL schedule was all about entertainment and not about sanity or what was good for us.

  We had the badass Vikings in four days.

  GAME 5

  Chicago 27, Tampa Bay19

  Picked Up by a Pickoff

  Once again the Bears struggled to get on track in a game they expected to win easily. In a near-replay of the season opener against Tampa Bay, the Bears trailed 12–3 at half-time and would have been shut out at intermission but for a 30-yard field goal by Kevin Butler as time expired in the second quarter.

  It was not what the Bears had anticipated, certainly not against the winless Bucs. But there they were, looking up at the perennial doormats of the division. But just as they had in Game 1, the Bears used an interception to turn the momentum.

  The first time it had been Leslie Frazier’s pick. This time it was Dave Duerson breaking quickly on a ball intended for tight end Jimmy Giles, intercepting it and setting up a touchdown pass from Jim McMahon to Dennis McKinnon covering 21 yards and pulling the Bears within 12–10.

  The Bears then turned up the defensive pressure, and Tampa Bay quarterback Steve DeBerg pulled out from behind center too soon, leaving the ball on the ground. Defensive tackle Steve McMichael fell on it to set up another 30-yard Butler field goal to give the Bears their first lead.

  They built the margin to 20–12 when Walter Payton, held under 100 yards rushing for the fourth straight game, scored on a four-yard run in the fourth quarter.

  Tampa Bay answered with a 25-yard touchdown pass by DeBerg, his second of the game, and suddenly it was 20–19 with five minutes to go.

  Tampa Bay receiver Gerald Carter pays the price for a reception as Mike Singletary gets a closer look.

  McMahon twice talked coach Mike Ditka out of calling safe plays when it appeared that the easy way would be to punt and turn the game over to the defense. Instead McMahon converted a third-and-3 at the Bears’ 24 with an 8-yard completion to Emery Moorehead to keep the ball and the drive alive.

  Walter Payton and the Bears narrowly escaped with a win in the fifth game of their historic 1985 campaign.

  With two minutes left, McMahon anticipated a Bucs blitz and went deep to Willie Gault for 48 yards to the Tampa Bay 11. Payton scored two plays later to clinch the game with his second touchdown, this from nine yards.

  The Bears were gaining confidence in their ability to rally using a variety of weapons, and Ditka was learning to let McMahon be McMahon. They were believing in their abilities, believing in their talent and, above all, believing in each other.

  Chicago 27, Tampa Bay 19

  OCT. 6, 1985, AT TAMPA STADIUM

  BOTTOM LINE

  Duerson’s big play ignites turnaround

  KEY PLAY

  Emery Moorehead’s 8-yard reception on third-and-3 with the Bears up by one late in the fourth quarter. It led to Walter Payton’s victory-clinching touchdown run.

  KEY STAT

  Moorehead’s eight receptions for 114 yards represented the best day by a Bears tight end since Mike Ditka.

  Jim McMahon eludes Bucs defensive end John Cannon on a day when the quarterback rushed for 46 yards.

  Remembering ’85

  DAN HAMPTON

  No. 99, defensive end

  “Our Super Bowl was played against the Giants and then the Rams, because we knew once we got to the Super Bowl, it was an avalanche. No one was going to stop us.”

  “It was an amazing anticipation of all the expectations. Boom. It’s done. It’s over. We’ve done it.”

  “A lot of times people become overwhelmed and intimidated by something that explodes, and the next thing you know, it’s on national TV. It was like Ditka took it in stride, saying, ‘OK, that’s great.’ It’s almost a Machiavellian way of using the Fridge on the Monday Night Football game. It’s almost like he orchestrated it.

  Buddy fostered an us-against-the-world mentality.”

  “The moment of truth was the Miami game, and you know about them grabbing each other in the shower and starting fisticuffs.”

  “Actually, Ditka was right. Ditka was right in saying, ‘Hey, whatever you thought, it ain’t working. You’ve got to change.’”

  “When I played, everybody talked about the ‘Steel Curtain’ and the ‘Doomsday Defense.’ Now, 25 years later, they talk about the Bears’ defense.”

  “You’re not going to run it on us. When you try to throw it on us, it’s just a matter of time before we start tearing your quarterback down.”

  “You have to give a lot of credit to Jim Finks in that he was able to build a roster of talent that Ditka was able to utilize.”

  “I had five operations on each leg when I played, and when I finished, I had both of them done again, so that’s 12. I’ll need some type of artificial joint when I’m 55 or 60. I couldn’t run out of the house if it was on fire, but at the end of the day, I’m glad I was able to do what I was supposed to do.”

  “When I was in sixth grade, I’d fallen out of a tree and fractured both of my legs. I had played football, and I was obviously pretty gifted at it. But after I fell, they had to put pins and plates in my ankles. The doctor said I needed to do something else. I started playing saxophone in the band.”

  “I was very goal-driven, and the goal, obviously, is to go to the Super Bowl and win it. We had it within our grasp, but we didn’t close the deal, especially in ’86 and ’87.”

  “It’s too simple to say, ‘Oh, well, our quarterback was never healthy,’ but I find it hard to believe that New England would’ve won three of four without Tom Brady.”

  “My problem with Jim McMahon was everybody had their own individual goals or objectives. I can’t blame him for not having the same goals or objectives that I did. Every game was important, and every season is the most important. Jim had other ideas about how to go about it. He was looking at the long road, wanting a 15-year career.”

  “A lot of it came from the mentality of our team. McMichael and I and Ditka, we were Cro-Magnon. I think in a way that’s what made that team special. The future doesn’t belong to anybody. Today is the day.”

  “I’ve got a Hall of Fame ring and I’ve got a Super Bowl ring, and everybody says, ‘Which do you like the most?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s only [268] Hall of Fame rings in the world, but that’s the only Chicago Bears Super Bowl ring there is.’”

  ch
apter VI

  A Dog on My Ankle

  As we wrote this book, Ditka and I referred frequently to the loose-leaf 500-page binder that contained photocopied pages of Chicago newspaper sports reports from late 1984 all the way into early 1986. Sometimes Ditka would drift off, becoming so intent in his reading that his wife, Diana, and I would sit at the table in the restaurant, facing him, and talk about him almost as if he were not in the room. One time Mike borrowed his wife’s reading glasses to see some particularly fine print, and Diana cracked up watching this huge, oblivious man with the big, ruddy, circular, mustachioed face, studying newsprint while wearing tiny, rhinestone-encrusted glasses.

  Invariably Ditka would look up from his reading and say something about the craziness of that 1985 season, marveling at the whirlwind of gossip and excitement and anticipation and drama that surrounded the team and himself and how he was basically unaware of that sideshow element to the quest.

  “I almost never read the papers,” he said. “I never realized what was going on unless somebody told me. I guess we were a little different, huh?”

  He did have a weekly TV show on CBS during the season—hosted by former Bears teammate Johnny Morris—that became something of a local legend, with fans going crazy during the tapings and nobody ever quite sure how any episode would end.

  “McMahon doesn’t practice. Now he’s saying he thinks he hurt his back sleeping on his waterbed a week earlier. His waterbed. And he says he doesn’t need to practice at all, all he needs is to know the game plan and different formations.”

  —Ditka on McMahon

  At 2–0 the frenzy knob was slowly being turned up for Ditka’s boys, especially because there would be a third game in the first 17 days of the season—on a non-Thanksgiving Thursday, for goodness’ sake—and the Bears were playing their third undefeated team in a row. (Yes, technically, Tampa Bay was unbeaten in the season opener.) Moreover, the Minnesota Vikings were a perennial spear in the side of the Bears, much like the Packers were. The Vikings had dignified history on their side with their icily stoic icon of a coach, Bud Grant, at the helm once again, after a year off. And the Vikes had been to four Super Bowls in the 19 years since the “ultimate game” began. The Bears, of course, had been to none.

  Playing on a Thursday night, with one day being needed mostly for travel, was a tough chore for the Bears. But it was nothing compared to the distracting excitement after the Patriots game. For Ditka this was becoming a short week from hell. And the national media was starting to pay full attention to every tiny thing that came from the Bears camp, every word, every gesture, every bit of nonsense.

  I didn’t get crazy excited after the New England win, but I guess I shouldn’t even have smiled. I thought McMahon had made it through in good shape. But there he was on Monday at Lake Forest Hospital, in traction.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I don’t know when he hurt his back. And he didn’t know for sure, either. It could have been from as far back as the Tuesday before the game. It could have been on the first play of the game. It could have been while opening beer cans. But there he was, again, hurt. The year before he missed seven regular-season games, plus the playoffs because of injuries. This uncertainty, I knew by now, would probably be a theme for Jim’s whole career. It would probably make me check into a mental facility.

  By Tuesday he was wearing a big immobilizing collar around his neck, but he couldn’t practice, and I knew I was going to have to use Fuller, with Mike Tomczak as the backup quarterback. I mean, if you don’t practice, how in the hell can you play? But right away Jim started yapping about how there was “no possibility” he wouldn’t play. There were camera crews around. Joe Namath, Jim’s old childhood hero, I guess, had come to town to do something for TV about Mac. This was a big national game we were playing, and I knew everybody was fired up. But I’d let McMahon play four games in 1984 with a broken hand, and we’d lost two and been trailing when he came out of another. If he was hurt now, he was out. This was my new rule. Jesus, the guy was too sore even for his chiropractor to work on him!

  Other guys were banged up a little, too. Walter had bad ribs, maybe they were busted. But he never said anything, so I knew he was playing. Hell, he only missed one game in his entire career. And that was before I was coach, and he cried because they wouldn’t let him in. He would never ask out of a game. You would have to cut his leg off for that to happen. Kurt Becker, one of our offensive linemen, was bruised pretty bad. Covert had no feeling in his right arm. Maybe a pinched nerve, who knew? Dennis McKinnon had a hip pointer, and he was still recovering from that off-season knee surgery. But he was a tough son of a bitch, too. He never said anything about pain, but I knew what a hip pointer was. I had one in college, and I played with it, and the muscle slipped off the edge and down into my abdomen. You keep playing with it, and you get injections, and when the painkillers wear off, it hurts so much you can’t cough, you can’t fart, you can barely sit.

  The weird thing Dennis did, though, was he started talking about the Vikings. “I don’t think they’re as good as their record says,” he said. Bulletin-board crap. Now I don’t advocate stuff like that. But if you can back it up, I guess it’s okay. And I wouldn’t change anything about Dennis. I loved him.

  We go up to Minneapolis on Wednesday because of the league’s rule about being at the opposing site 24 hours in advance. This is a place I don’t like, especially just three days after our last game. Guys are definitely sore and hurting. McMahon doesn’t practice. Now he’s saying he thinks he hurt his back sleeping on his waterbed a week earlier. His waterbed. And he says he doesn’t need to practice at all, all he needs is to know the game plan and different formations. The media keeps asking me if McMahon is going to start. And I’m getting pissed off, and now I realize I actually want Fuller in there. He beat the Vikings the year before 34–3 when we clinched the division. He threw for two touchdowns. I’d like to show that he, Steve Fuller—and we—can do it again without McMahon at quarterback. So everybody shut up and sit down. Steve Fuller is my guy.

  The game started, and the noise in that damn roller rink was out of control. I hate the Metrodome. But the hell with it. There was a bigger problem. We were getting our asses handed to us.

  The offense was sputtering along, doing nothing. I could see that Walter was not himself. And all of the time we were falling behind, McMahon was bugging the shit out of me. He was pouting down on the bench, then he was standing behind me, then he was following me around like a puppy. I turned around and almost stepped on top of him. “Put me in,” he was saying. “I can play. I’m fine.”

  He was driving me crazy! We hadn’t practiced on Monday, then on Tuesday we were in shorts, no pads. We hadn’t changed much in our game plan, because there was no time. This is what we do, and the coaches can’t get pregnant with ideas. And Jim knew this. Get away from me! I’m thinking. But he’s right there like a mosquito, just pestering me to death.

  At halftime we’re down 10–6. Then in the third quarter we close it to 10–9 on another Butler field goal, but Vikings quarterback Tommy Kramer throws a TD pass, and they’re up, 17–9. All we’ve gotten after seven drives into their territory are three Butthead field goals. It isn’t Fuller’s fault, but things just aren’t clicking.

  “I can do it,” McMahon is saying. He’s driving me absolutely nuts.

  “You can’t throw the ball!” I say to him. “And you know you can’t.”

  “You gotta put me in,” he keeps saying. “I can throw.”

  “How can I put you in? You haven’t practiced.”

  But he did go through warmups. I don’t know how. But he did. That much was true.

  “Put me in.”

  “I don’t want you getting hurt all over again.”

  I wanted to win with Fuller. I thought about how we’d had to do it without McMahon before, and we’d probably have to again. I wanted to show we could do it for me, too. To prove to myself I didn’t need him, that as a team,
we really didn’t need anybody.

  Jim keeps standing beside me, then in front of me. Yapping away. The game’s going on, and I’m trying to coach.

  “Shut up!” I say. “We’re trying to win!”

  Then the third quarter’s half over, and our ass is up against the wall. He’s like a little rat terrier, this McMahon guy, biting my ankle.

  “Okay,” I say. “You’re in.”

  I call a play, and I don’t remember what it was, but McMahon gets to the line and I can tell he’s calling an audible. Jesus. Lord help me, he’s calling out “Blue-69,” which is a weak-side takeoff for Willie Gault, a fly route.

  “Get away from me! I’m thinking. But he’s right there like a mosquito, just pestering me to death.”

  —Ditka on McMahon

  Now the thing about McMahon is he has the uncanny ability to recognize a blitz just by reading the defense. He could look at a safety and know what was coming just from the safety’s alignment, just from his eyes, just from his attitude and body language. So Willie takes off on the left side, and here comes the blitz. There was no way we could pick it up with our blocking. So Payton nails one guy really good and then takes just a piece out of the other guy. It was like bumper pool. McMahon’s falling back, and at the last second he heaves the ball and, my God, it’s a perfect pass, and Willie catches it for a 70-yard touchdown.

  One play. Insane. The Vikings knew he couldn’t throw. That’s what I thought, too. But he did.