The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest

by Ditka, Mike

  “I guess when I was growing up I always wanted to be someone in my community that people looked up to. I had dreams of a Super Bowl team, Super Bowl MVP, all the things that I accomplished. Yes, I had dreams of that.

  “If you don’t know how to commit yourself, then you aren’t going to be anything.”

  “I guess I’m a people watcher. I enjoy seeing people accomplish dreams and things of that nature. I remember meeting Venus Williams back in ’87, ’88. Watching people go from nowhere to get to somewhere. Because I know I’ve kind of done the same thing. I had the chance to crawl out from under a rock, from nowhere to become something.”

  chapter X

  Howling Sounds and Defenders from Another Planet

  After the Packers game Walter Payton had danced past reporters, saying, reminiscent of the old Jackie Gleason Honey-mooners line, “Nine-and-oh, and away we go!”

  The Bears were definitely in high gear. Except, of course, for Jim McMahon, who was dealing with leaking tires and busted gaskets. Now his right shoulder was sprained. In practice early in the week, he threw left-handed. Not well, but he threw. But he could barely lift his right arm and had been told by trainer Fred Caito not to use it. Jimmy Mac grinned his twisted grin and said, “I enjoy pain.” It was a good marriage, then. But as the days before the Detroit Lions game passed, it became clearer that McMahon was not going to be fit to play, perhaps for a while.

  Also mixed into that week was the finding on Thursday in Schaumburg Circuit Court of a guilty verdict for Ditka of driving under the influence after the 49ers game. Ditka was subdued and reasonable in court. His attorney, Don Reuben, complained that Ditka had been handcuffed “and trussed like a chicken.” Asked by judge Earl B. Hoffenberg if his client had been abusive toward the arresting officer, Reuben replied, “I suspect anyone would be cantankerous if they were handcuffed.”

  “McMichael was like a Harley-Davidson biker. Singletary was like a minister.”

  —Ditka

  “You are a well-known public figure,” the judge said to Ditka. “You have a great deal of influence over young adults.”

  The coach nodded, saying he had been speaking to young people about responsible driving for some time. He was sentenced to a year of court supervision, fined $300, and ordered to attend at least 10 hours of driving school. Basically, he needed to do his penance, and steer clear of further arrests, and matters would work out fine.

  I still thought I wasn’t guilty. I had only been clocked at 63 in a 55-mph zone, and there were cars going past me at 95. Go 55, and you’ll get killed. But that was 25 years ago, and I’m not mad at anyone. The judge made his decision, and that’s that. It was very embarrassing for me; to the Bears; to Jerry Vainisi, who’s my friend; to the players; and to my family. But I didn’t lose authority with the team. And I think that is because they realized I was just a regular guy who had made a mistake.

  And now I knew that McMahon was definitely out. There wouldn’t be any off-the-bench heroics like in the first Vikings game. Steve Fuller had to play, and he hadn’t started since that first Minnesota game. He’s a good guy, and he handled the way he got yanked very well.

  There was pressure on us now, because we were everybody’s target. But what I remember is how windy it was going into that game. It was mid-November, and it was cold and wet, but mostly it was incredibly windy. I watched warmups before the game, and the wind was roaring out of the north like crazy. The flags looked like they were hooked to airplanes. Passes went everywhere. Sid Luckman couldn’t have thrown in that wind.

  So I decided to run the ball. The first 21 plays I called were runs. Maybe that was overdoing it. Yeah, it was overdoing it. Hell, for the game we ran 55 times! But I was starting to get a little tight, and I didn’t want a game like this to slip away because of interceptions or stuff that was almost accidental. I knew this was how I lost the 49ers game in the playoffs last year, by being too conservative, but I didn’t want mistakes to be the reason the Lions won. Payton and Suhey both rushed for over 100 yards. I guess inside I knew the Lions weren’t that good. They couldn’t stop us, and we won 24–3.

  The only time I used Fridge on offense, he went in motion again, like that pass play. But Fuller snuck it in from the 1 for a touchdown. Perry was definitely a big deal, though. On Monday he went to New York to be on Letterman. He had his front tooth out, as always, but he had a coat and tie and sweater vest on, and he looked nice. Letterman asked him if it was true he had once drunk 48 beers after a Clemson victory over North Carolina. Fridge nodded and said, “It was a big game.”

  The thing is a team consists of a lot of different people. Steve McMichael and Mike Singletary were both from Texas, but after that they were about as different as two people could be. McMichael was like a Harley-Davidson biker. Singletary was like a minister. I think he might have been a minister, might have actually had ministry papers. I don’t think they ever had a conversation that lasted more than seven seconds. So what? They respected each other. And they both had huge hearts.

  We didn’t have the NFL combine back in those days, thank God, because neither of them would have impressed anybody at an idiotic meat market like that. Singletary, I mean, he’s in the Hall of Fame and I think he’s on his way to being a terrific NFL coach. He had a great study and work ethic, and he was intelligent. And he had discipline. But he was short and he wore glasses, and how do you think he would have rated in the computers? Those combines are unadulterated bullshit. You go to Indianapolis and watch somebody run 40s and lift weights and jump around, and you think you can tell me he’s going to be a great football player? IQ tests are nothing. How many times do they hand you pencils out on the field?

  When I came out of college, it was even more primitive. In my rookie training camp Halas said he wanted me to run a 40.

  I said, “Why?”

  He said, “I just want you to run it.”

  So I did. And I ran a 4.7 on grass, maybe like a 4.73, which surprised me. That’s pretty good. Of course, it was before I dislocated my foot. But I knew I could run. I knew it my whole life, from when I was a kid and I ran everywhere. That’s what you do. There were guys who were fast as hell, but I watched Walter Payton run, and I watched Barry Sanders run, and they weren’t all that fast. But I never saw people catching them from behind.

  There were true sprinters like Bob Hayes and my onetime roommate Johnny Morris, who had some short indoor record like the 50-yard dash or something. But I saw Willie Galimore beat him by five yards in a 40. Willie, man, he could fly. And so could his buddy, Johnny Farrington. They were as exciting as it gets. They were Bears teammates of mine back in the early days. Galimore was a back out of Florida A&M, and he ran for 181 yards in a game my second year. Farrington, whose nickname was Bo, was a wide receiver from Prairie View, and he still holds the Bears’ longest reception record, 98 yards.

  They were on our 1963 championship team, and we should have had a great team in 1964. But one night at preseason training camp down in Rensselaer, Indiana, in August 1964, Willie and Bo went to a country club bar to watch the Olympics on TV and maybe have a beer or two. It was an off-day and they were coming back on this twisting highway that led to camp. The mowers had just cut the grass, and I think they took down some signs that pointed out the curves. Willie was driving, and he went off the road and then swerved to get back on, and one of the wheels evidently collapsed and the car rolled. It was a Volkswagen with the top open, and Willie flew out the roof and was killed, and then the car rolled over and broke Johnny’s neck and killed him.

  “My high school coach said, ‘You should study dentistry. You can be a dentist and come back here and make great money.’ Sounded good to me.”

  —Ditka

  I was 24 years old, and the next morning I went down to the morgue with my teammates Rick Casares and Bill George, and I looked at the bodies on the slab. There was not one mark on Willie, not one mark. And Farrington had a cut on his face.

  It was devastating to me. It
was devastating to the team. We should have been really good in 1964, but we went 5–9, and it was like our soul had been cut out. I know we’re all going to die. That’s why you have to try hard when you’ve got your chance, and it’s why you shouldn’t let the trivial things make you crazy. Way back, I was ridiculous. Are you kidding me? It got to the point where it was beyond stupidity, with my anger and all. Like with Harbaugh on the sideline, even then I was 500 times wrong, but I was so pissed off about that audible I wanted to kill him. Same with Avellini. Why? Why couldn’t I just pat him on the back and say, “Don’t do it again”?

  Maybe it came from just wanting to win so bad. Back when I was in Little League in Aliquippa, I’d be pitching, and a teammate would make an error, and I’d get so mad I’d tell the manager I wanted to play that position and to bring in another pitcher. I was nuts. But I just think that winning is important. Because if you line up in life and you accept defeat, then you will be defeated. And you’ll get what you were ready for. When you quit, you’re defeated. Right there. That’s the equation. If you keep fighting, you’ve got a chance.

  Look, you can’t say you’re going to be the greatest in everything. Take singing, for instance. You want to sing like Sinatra? We have a singer here at my restaurant on Chestnut Street who is very good, John Vincent, who sounds a hell of a lot like Frank. But in fourth grade the nun told me, “Michael, it sounds like you’re howling. Do NOT sing.” So I wasn’t going anywhere with my voice. I will not be singing here at my upstairs bar, for instance.

  Do we pick the things we’re good at, or do they pick us? I’m not sure it matters. When I was a kid, I was a pretty good baseball player. I had a big strike zone, but if I got hold of it, it went. I played at Pitt, and one game we played against Kent State, and they had a pitcher who ended up with the Yankees. He put one down the middle and, man, I blasted it way over the centerfield wall. It was big time. Tommy Lasorda scouted me, and years later he said, “You had a big strike zone, but I watched you hit one way over the fence.”

  I had a chance to sign a minor league contract. But I wanted to go to college and get an education, even though I had no idea what that really meant or what it would be in. My high school coach said, “You should study dentistry. You can be a dentist and come back here and make great money.” Sounded good to me.

  So you get into the what-ifs. What if I had gone to Pitt and blown out my knee, and that was it for sports? I guess I would have come back to Aliquippa and worked in the steel mill. The dentistry thing wouldn’t have happened. I mean, think of Dr. Ditka. Me looking in people’s mouths? I think I’d rather knock teeth out than put them in. But you don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t have quit school; maybe I would have become that dentist. And a good one. A nice, sweet dentist. The point is, my life wouldn’t have ended. What would have happened if I’d gotten hurt? I never really have thought about it. None of that “Why me, not him?” stuff. I played with a lot of guys from all over the state of Pennsylvania, tough kids, and they hurt a knee or whatever and were never the same. It’s a risk, but you don’t think about it. Back then, you hurt your knee, it was like butchery—they put your leg in a huge cast, and your career could be finished.

  At Pitt we came in with a hardnosed freshman class, and I remember in one scrimmage we kicked the shit out of the varsity. Because we wanted it bad. There’s fate involved in life, but I don’t think the key to life is chance. It’s when you realize what an opportunity you have, and you snatch it. I got a chance to play football and a chance to coach it, and that was enough for me. I made up my mind a long time ago that eventually I would coach the Chicago Bears. I didn’t know how it would happen. There was a lot of dumb stuff along the way. I had to grow up. I left Chicago on bad terms with Mr. Halas. And then at the end, in 1992, I was terminated by the powers that be. That was 100 percent jealousy. One McCaskey at the top was never thrilled with me, and now he wanted everything for himself. So it goes.

  But what I could always come back to was this: I’d been drafted by the man who started the NFL. And the man who started it had asked me to coach. That’s a pretty close connection to the roots of football. Not like being the pope, but it was pretty good.

  Now we had the Dallas Cowboys coming up. Halas may have given me more opportunities than anyone else, but nobody flat-out helped me more than Cowboys coach Tom Landry. It was almost like we were going from Forrest Gregg, who was Darth Vader, to Moses.

  Everybody needs help in life. When you come to the Y in the road, you have to take one way or the other. When I came to the Y, Coach Landry was standing there, and he said, “Come this way.” And I went that way, and that’s basically that. He believed I could be a coach. I know he was worried that if I couldn’t control myself, how could I control others? But he let me work on that.

  The main thing he told me when I finally got the Bears job was, “Whether you succeed or not, do it your way. Don’t ever leave yourself open to doing it somebody else’s way and then blame them if you fail.” That was wonderful advice, because at the beginning I did listen to everybody. Who doesn’t? Tom was more important to me than anyone in a way, even more than my dad. I had a great high school coach. And Coach Halas was my coach as a football player. But Tom was my coach as a coach.

  I basically brought his offense to the Bears. I changed a few things, but I even numbered the holes the way he did, which was very unusual. We had the odd numbers—1, 3, 5, 7, 9—to the right, and the even—2, 4, 6, 8—to the left. Everybody in football does it the opposite way, but not in Dallas. I think Tom did it that way because he was looking at it from the defensive standpoint, seeing it from their eyes. I did it his way. I couldn’t change it.

  I know people said we were about as different as two people could be, him so stoic and calm and me all keyed-up. But I looked up to him. And I think he saw something in me he respected and appreciated, and maybe he even was a little like me. He knew, no matter what, how much I cared about the game and doing things well. I’d been his player and then his assistant, and now that I was an NFL head coach, we still talked all the time. I needed his advice on so many things. I could call, and he would always be there for me. He was my biggest booster.

  So now we have to play his team, the Cowboys, “America’s Team,” down in Dallas. And they’re pretty good, as they always were under Tom. They’re 7–3 and in first place in the NFC East. This was another big test for us. We got past the Redskins and the 49ers and the Packers, twice. And we had the undefeated streak. But Dallas is Dallas. They beat us last year, the only time we’d played them since I started coaching the Bears. We were only favored by a point.

  McMahon was definitely out; his shoulder tendinitis wasn’t improving, so Fuller was my guy again. Good old Steve. I loved him to death. But was he up to this? And I didn’t know how I felt for sure about this contest. I was the pupil going against the teacher. I had a lot of emotions going around. Believe me, I was pretty chewed up inside.

  And then we played. And we annihilated Dallas. Buddy’s philosophy was simple: “Take the sum-bitch away from them in a hurry.” Meaning the ball. Our defense mutilated the Cowboys. It became like a snowball going downhill. Those poor Dallas quarterbacks didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. I can still see their backup quarterback Gary Hogeboom, when he was already on his way to the turf, and Singletary hit him so hard before he could reach the ground that I thought Mike had killed him.

  The offense was solid. We gained almost 400 yards, and Payton had another 100-yard day. But the defense shut everything down. Richard Dent caught a pass tipped by Hampton at the goal line and ran it in for a touchdown. Cornerback Mike Richardson ran an interception back for a score. Les Frazier had a long interception return. Otis Wilson knocked their starting quarterback, Danny White, out of the game. Twice. Jeez, I started to feel sorry for White, down on the turf, his helmet off, half-conscious. Our defense was crazy, like attack dogs, and they started barking. “Woof! Woof!”

  Somewhere in the third quarter I said
to Buddy, “Can you slow these guys down?”

  And he said, “Mike, I can’t.”

  Our defense was gone. On another planet.

  We won 44–0 with a backup quarterback. It was the worst loss for Dallas, ever. By the end Texas Stadium was silent, except for all of the Bears fans, who were barking and singing.

  I felt good, but I also felt bad. Here we were, doing what we could only dream about doing. And yet it was the worst thing, too. We had our picture taken before the game, Coach Landry and me, our arms around each other. This was the guy I’d learned everything from. He was a good racquet-ball player, and when I was coaching under him, he and I and Dan Reeves and Ernie Stautner and a bunch of guys would play after practice. We had fun, and then he’d say, “Go home. Be with your families. If we can’t get our work done during the day, something’s wrong.” He never asked the assistants to stay real late. He taught me that sometimes you overthink things, you try to change game plans so much that you’re just messing with something that isn’t broken. There was probably nothing he was prouder of than when Dan Reeves and I both became head coaches after studying under him.

  But 44–0?

  In life there are conflicts like that. It hurt. But I remember just a week before I’d been watching Monday Night Football, and Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann got hit by Lawrence Taylor, and his leg broke in half. Compound fracture. They caught it on tape. And it made me sick. Theismann never played another down of football.

  But that was life. Life went on.

  And now I wanted to go without a loss, ever.

  GAME 9