The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest

by Ditka, Mike

  “Back then, Chicago teams always seemed to crumble when they were close to winning it all. The 1969 Cubs had done it, then the 1984 Cubs did. The White Sox blew the Series in 1959.”

  —Ditka

  McMahon’s butt was still sore, of course, and he wanted his acupuncturist, a fellow named Hiroshi Shiriashi, to be flown to New Orleans to stick pins in his posterior. This created a minor brouhaha and much debate in the media and rowdy sports bars about the benefits of and philosophy behind Eastern healing processes. Ditka didn’t care if somebody stuck a bazooka up McMahon’s ass. If it calmed the quarterback down, eased his discomfort, and helped him play, do it. Willie Gault, ever the avant garde health savant, wanted the acupuncturist brought in, too, to work on him.

  Shortly after the ruckus began, Bears president Michael McCaskey, who had barred the acupuncturist from flying on the team’s charter plane, said fine, enough, I give. “We’re going to welcome him with a brass band,” McCaskey, the foppish chief, said sarcastically. Shiriashi and another specialist were flown to the bayou by the Illinois State Acupuncture Association—hey, this was where the publicity was!—and the needles came out.

  McMahon himself was peeved with the press, generally, telling the assembled masses on Media Monday at the Superdome that the stupid scrutiny “comes with winning. I don’t think too many of you guys are up in Green Bay right now.” He may have casually stuffed another gob of tobacco into his lower lip as he said this.

  Back in Chicago Mayor Harold Washington declared that the Daley Center Plaza was now “Bears Plaza,” and had workers erect an electronically complex 600-square-foot television screen, consisting of 28,000 tiny tubes, that showed—what else?—the “Super Bowl Shuffle” on a continual loop. Folks everywhere lapped up the midwinter zaniness.

  William Perry was asked about women fans, whether they wrote to him, maybe sent photos? “I don’t get no letters from no ladies,” Fridge declared sternly. Steve McMichael told the media about clearing out biker bars with Dan Hampton, about whatever deranged things came to his crafty mind. Asked by reporters about his snake-hunting hobby, how he lured the snakes, McMichael drawled for their amusement, “You throw a reporter out there, and when the rat tlesnake bites, you just grab it behind the neck.”

  Pete Rozelle declared of the Bears, speaking for the universe, or at least the TV-aware NFL, “We love them. They got a 75 rating for the Rams game.”

  The Bears were on the cover of Time magazine.

  They were officially the rage.

  The truth is we were nervous and concerned, but we also were confident as hell. As Dennis McKinnon told the media, if we don’t make mistakes, there’s no way in hell the Patriots can beat us. That was just the plain truth. Hampton said we didn’t want to squeak by, we wanted to beat them soundly. And we did want to. We were favored by 10 points or something, but I thought that if we did what we were capable of, we could win big, really make a statement.

  Otis Wilson even said we wanted a shutout. Fine. We did. But let’s not talk too much. Their guy Raymond Clayborn said he thought Wilson “was crazy,” and he added, “Obviously, it will be an incentive for our offense to prove them wrong. And I know they will.” Clayborn played defensive back. I don’t think he knew much about our defense. He’d never played against it. I think he should have asked, oh, let’s say the Giants or Rams about it. But that was fine. Who cared about Raymond Clayborn? It was all just talk.

  There was a flu bug going around down in New Orleans, and I don’t just mean from Bourbon Street hangovers. Tony Eason had a case of it, Kevin Butler missed Friday’s practice and was hospitalized because of it, and some coaches and other people didn’t feel too hot. But this was the biggest game of most people’s lives, so, I mean, are you going to miss it because of a virus?

  There were people coming and telling me they saw McMahon out on Bourbon Street at 2:30 in the morning. And, no, I didn’t have a curfew until Saturday, the night before the game. But we had wakeup calls at 6:30 in the morning, and if the guys didn’t know what was really important just now, they were pretty messed up.

  Back then, Chicago teams always seemed to crumble when they were close to winning it all. The 1969 Cubs had done it, then the 1984 Cubs did. The White Sox blew the Series in 1959. The Bears had that 1963 NFL championship, the one I played on, but that was 22 years previous, and it wasn’t the Super Bowl. Getting close didn’t mean jack to me. You practice and work so you can get close. Then you take close and you kick its carcass to hell. You want the top, the championship. You smell it, you taste it. You get it. That’s all there is.

  McMahon’s acupuncture guy showed up, and Jim and Willie got worked on. Got stuck with more pins than a voodoo doll, I guess. The press asked me about McMahon’s butt on Wednesday, and I said it was 200 percent better. Was it? I don’t know. Jesus, I was supposed to be monitoring his ass?

  I just knew he was going to play. I mean, McMahon even wore a headband that said, “ACUPUNCTURE” on it. I just hoped everyone would make it to game time. McMahon supposedly had pushed a photographer who was trying to take his picture in the French Quarter. Now that I think about it, maybe I did impose a curfew after that. But I wasn’t going around and knocking on guys’ doors.

  Myself, I wasn’t partying. I got a touch of the flu and took it easy at night. I really didn’t feel too well the whole week. My parents were in town, and we went out to dinner one night, Diana and my folks, but that was about it. My kids were there, too. I waited in the Hilton Hotel is all I did. Otis, meanwhile, was still talking, but that’s because the press kept asking questions. I think they’d ask dumb-ass questions until they took their last little breath. “The Rams are better than the Patriots,” Otis told them. “I don’t think there’s any comparison.” There probably wasn’t.

  “I was thinking constantly that two teams get to these championships and nobody remembers the team that loses.”

  —Ditka

  People were asking about the weather, and if it might affect us. We’re playing in a freaking dome! Honest to God, that happened. Then on Wednesday a helicopter flies over when we’re practicing outdoors at the New Orleans Saints’ practice field in Metairie, Louisiana. It hovers overhead, taking photos or whatever, and next thing you know, McMahon has dropped his shorts and is mooning the camera crew, showing them his hurt butt cheeks. Next day in the papers, there he is, doing his thing. What can I say? Shame on you? Yes, I cared, because I thought it was an embarrassment to the organization. People would look at us and say we’re idiots. Maybe we were to a degree. But I wouldn’t call attention to the fact. Jim was wrong there. A little discretion might be in order. I wasn’t thrilled. But would I go to the wall for him as my starting quarterback? Absolutely.

  For us as a team, the main thing was we never changed our philosophy in New Orleans. It started in Platteville, and we believed in what we were doing. You don’t take risks if you don’t have to, but if you don’t risk something, you have no chance. We risked being aggressive. That’s what we were. That’s what we would remain.

  Gary Fencik Remembers ’85

  Super Bowl QBs: McMahon’s Butt, Tony Eason’s Fear

  “We made it down there to New Orleans and we’re the Bears, so it’s a wild time. McMahon’s butt was an unusual injury, in that it was a bad contusion. That was a wow! All those acupuncture needles and stuff, I don’t know. But the scariest thing to me was Tom Thayer getting shots in his fingers in a huddle.

  “The game takes its toll. I remember Tony Eason in the Super Bowl, and I’d never seen a quarterback like him. We’d played the Patriots earlier in the season, so Eason knew what was coming. Only worse. He was not looking downfield. He was not looking for open receivers. He was looking for a place to duck. I could see that, and I could see all the emotion in the huddle from the defensive line. I’d been in the league 10 years, and I wanted to enjoy this, to savor it.

  “Years later I ran into Lions quarterback Joe Ferguson at a golf outing, and as soon as I got there
he let it be known he did not want to talk about the hit Wilber Marshall put on him, under the chin, the one that knocked him out while he was still in mid-air. He did not want to talk about that.

  “I guess I can understand that. What we did to people wasn’t much fun for them. Though I must say, it was quite a fun time for us.”

  The night before the game we had meetings. Basically, that’s it. I met with the whole team, and I told them you’re not winning this game for me or for Halas or McCaskey or anybody else. You’re winning it for yourselves, for the guy sitting next to you. It’s not about anything I’ve ever said. You have this wonderful moment in time, and you can answer to each other forever.

  I had some of the guys stand up and say what the game meant to them. We broke it up then and I talked to the offense, and Buddy talked to the defense in another room. I guess their part got pretty crazy. They might have gone nuts. There was a lot of noise, and I think maybe a film projector got smashed and maybe there were some holes in the wall. I think Buddy told the players he loved them and he was leaving, taking that Eagles job. I don’t know for sure. But that’s what he told me later. And they knew something was over, this was it. Their general had one more battle. The defense had its bayonettes fixed. I know that.

  I went to bed early. Sunday was a blur. With a game starting so late, it was like a Monday Night game, and that just messes with you. All day long you have to wait around. And here we are so close to the Superdome that we can walk there. No need to leave early or anything. I know I got up around 5 AM or earlier, and we had Mass for the Catholics and devotionals for the Protestants, and we got the position coaches together for a while. But it was really nothing. We try to eat our pregame meal three or four hours before game time, so we did that, but I don’t remember many details. It’s all such a cloud of anticipation. I do know I was thinking constantly that two teams get to these championships, and nobody remembers the team that loses.

  That’s crazy, if you think about it.

  We’re 17–1, but if we finish 17–2, it’s nothing. I had too much time to think. You get too much time, you get pregnant with ideas. But I had watched so much film of the Patriots, I knew the whole defense would key on Payton, and why not? So what a great weapon that was. And what a great decoy he could be.

  The thing is our defense hadn’t been scored on in the playoffs, and to say we were confident was an understatement. Still, you don’t know. You don’t know. You just don’t know. The clock would not move.

  After what seemed like years, the game finally started. Actually, it almost began, and then it was delayed a little bit because of too much smoke from the fireworks inside the Superdome or something. Noise, screaming, cameras everywhere. Everybody was uptight. Even McMahon. We got the ball, and on the second play Jim called the wrong formation on a weak-side slant, and Walter got hit just when he was getting the ball and fumbled. The Patriots recovered at our 19-yard line. Oh, this is a great way to start. This is perfect.

  McMahon had had his butt shot up by team doctor Clarence Fossier, probably with novocaine and a little cortisone in there. He also was wearing gloves. Indoors. Help me. He told me he was going to do that. He’d worn them in the last two games, which were cold as can be, but here it’s 72 degrees, maybe hotter. I said, “Is that the right thing to do?”

  “I get a better grip on the ball,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Do whatever you want.”

  But when he came to the sideline now, I said, “What are you doing?”

  “I messed up,” he said. “I called the wrong formation.”

  When he called a Slant 24, it should have gone left to the weak side, instead of to the right. Maybe he got confused for an instant by the numbers, because, see, I numbered even to the left and odd to the right, which nobody else does. That was from Coach Landry….

  But this is the thing—our defense didn’t let New England move forward an inch after the turnover, not a single inch, and they had to settle for a field goal from the same spot. Talk about character. We had become a whole.

  And the rout was on.

  We scored the next 44 points. It was an ass-whipping. Plain and simple. Everything we knew we could do, we did. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of a game plan in my life. They keyed on Walter like we thought they would, and so we used him in motion or flanked him or used him as a decoy and let Suhey carry the ball. We hit them with so many missiles it was unreal. The first time we got the ball back, we hit them with a 43-yard pass to Gault. I wasn’t going to play it tight. I knew going in this was balls to the wall.

  Butler had two field goals early, then Suhey scored on an 11-yard run. It was only 23–3 at the half, but we were killing them. They had minus-14 yards of total offense for the half. We were making them go backward.

  In the third quarter we scored two touchdowns to make it 37–3. Then we had the ball at their 1, and I sent in Fridge. He plowed it over to make the score 44–3. I’d already put him in to block once and also to pass. That didn’t work, and he got tackled while still looking to throw. He is probably the heaviest man ever to be sacked.

  Tony Eason, I’m not blaming him, but I think our defense was so relentless that he got shell-shocked. I think he started looking for the rush, for who was going to earhole him or hit his back or his knees or slam him, and he couldn’t concentrate on routes or receivers. I mean, wow, he did not complete a single pass in the game. He was zero-for-eight, oh for the Super Bowl. Steve Grogan came in later, but it was history. We annihilated the Patriots 46–10. Richard Dent was the MVP, and that was a great choice. He represented that incredible defense.

  McMahon played well after that first series, with two touchdown runs and 256 yards passing. He wore all of these headbands, too, looked like a street sign, but he was very clever about it. One said “Plato” or “Pluto” or something like that, for a friend of his, one was for juvenile diabetes, and one said “POW-MIA” for the war veterans. Not that I was watching his forehead. But this, I found out later, was famous stuff. This was what got the media excited.

  When it was over, when the final second ran off, I felt this incredible sense of relief. The hype and the buildup had been so huge that I just felt totally drained. I didn’t even notice the guys coming to pick me up. Some players grabbed Buddy and hoisted him up, and two guys got me. Looking at photos now, I see it was McMichael with my right leg and Fridge with my left. It scared me a bit, to tell you the truth. I’d never been lifted like that before. My hips and legs aren’t in mint condition, you know. But it was a great feeling, too. Two defensive players were picking me up, although Fridge was part of the offense, too, of course. As I recall, they were very gentle.

  “Life is fragile. You never know. My buddy and teammate Joe Marconi died young. You wonder why some go and some stay.”

  —Ditka

  I was glad I got to have some fun with William Perry. I did the stuff with him, because he was a good player and I liked him. I was going to have him run for a touchdown, catch one, and throw one. It almost worked. I probably would have let him kick a field goal, too. Nah, I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have let Walter kick one. There were limits. People said I told William, “I made you a hero,” but I never said that. We just had a good time, that’s all.

  But what I realized after the game, after we were champions, 18–1, and bigshots of the day, was that Walter Payton didn’t score in the game. And that bothered him. And because it bothered him, it bothered me. McMahon had two short TD runs. Perry had one. Suhey had one. Walter had none. I didn’t plan that. That put a damper on things later. I asked Walter, and he said it didn’t bother him, but it did. I regret not giving him that honor. But we had a game plan, and he was the whole reason it worked, because wherever he went, the Patriots defense went. Later I explained this to him. I don’t think he ever accepted it totally.

  The other thing I regret is Les Frazier blowing out his knee on a reverse on a punt return. He was a defensive back and used to running backwa
rd. Now he’s carrying the ball, going forward? I love Steve Kazor, our special teams coach, but I don’t know if that all was necessary. It was a freak thing, but Les was never really the same afterward.

  I mean, think about it. A bench kid named Keith Ortego—a guy wearing my No. 89, by the way—signals a fair catch and then grabs the ball and runs and hands off to Les. There’s a penalty flag, and the play doesn’t even count. Frazier was one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL, and he’ll never get credit for it, because he didn’t have a long career, and he wasn’t a showboat like Deion Sanders. And at his highest peak, at our moment of glory, he goes down like that. I guess that’s football.

  Life is fragile. You never know. My buddy and teammate Joe Marconi died young. You wonder why some go and some stay. Why do things happen? It was so good for Marconi, then boom—dead at 54. Everybody knows about the tragedy of Brian Piccolo. And I am always haunted by Farrington and Galimore in that crash.

  You have to appreciate things at the moment and never stop trying to achieve what you want. A while back I read that a guy I played against, Jim Otto, had his leg amputated. He never missed a game in 15 years, but he’s had over 50 major surgeries because of his injuries, and he has so many artificial joints that his body’s immunity to infection is about gone. It’s a tragedy. It’s like old George Connor of the Bears who went through stuff like that.

  Jim Otto was a warrior. Back then we played hurt. Sports medicine sure wasn’t what it is now. And you didn’t want to have your job taken from you, the way Wally Pipp got his taken by Lou Gehrig. See, you get in the starting blocks and you run the race. That’s what you do. That’s what George Connor did. That’s life. You can’t rewrite things as you go along. You have to go straight ahead on the path you’ve chosen, with all your might. Who is Jim Otto? All those things. That’s who he is.