The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest (10 page)

The New England Patriots were coming to town. Coached by Raymond Berry, the Patriots had won their first game and had a fierce defense and a workable offense directed by third-year quarterback Tony Eason. Nobody knew that New England might figure into the Bears’ journey somewhere else along the trail. For now all that mattered was keeping the dream alive, the quest.

One issue that popped up again during the week was the sometimes harmless but sometimes nasty rivalry between the Bears’ offense and defense. A fight had broken out in practice midweek between offensive guard Mark Bortz and defensive tackle Steve McMichael. Actually, there had been two fights between the men. Fights can show intensity and desire. But they can also show pettiness and lack of respect. Ditka was a little worried about this last mini-brawl.

I guarantee you I never moved three feet
when the fight happened between Bortz and McMichael, and I don’t think Buddy moved, either. It wasn’t that I wasn’t concerned, but some things have to be settled without a lot of interference. And what could I do, anyway?

McMichael, that’s just the way he was. He was a tough Texas boy, a free agent we picked up because he had tons of heart. He was a little out there at times. They said he wore his clothes in camp until he had a pile of dirty stuff, then he’d just turn the pile over
and wear it all again. One of his hobbies was rattlesnake hunting. But he would get in your face and never shy away from anything. I love Steve McMichael. Bortz was quiet, a six-foot-six, 270-pound guy from a little town in Wisconsin, who had been a defensive player and co-captain at Iowa. He was a defensive lineman before he switched to offense in the NFL, so maybe that had the two of them going a little bit.

One problem we had was we were always going against our own defense in practice, and sometimes they were so fired up that we couldn’t get a damn thing accomplished. I’d yell at Buddy, “For Chris-sake, we’re not playing the Bears next week!” But there was tension—football is a mean game—and those defensive players had great chemistry and great pride. Buddy had them cranked up like assassins. They’d run that “46,” and it was like there were 50 killers on the line ready to slit your throat.

But then—and I think it may have been a week or so after we had bailed out the defense against Tampa Bay—we finally got the defense’s respect. The exact date of a lot of these things gets blurry. It wasn’t like I was keeping a diary, and after coaching the Bears for 11 years, I may get some things jumbled. But you don’t forget the moments that jump out at you, the ones that changed things. At any rate, we were at practice, no media was around, and McMichael was mouthing off to the offensive line. Who knows who he was pissed at. But Jim Covert just grabbed him and body-slammed him. Now I love Steve, as I’ve said. He never complained about anything, fought through any pain he had. And he was a tough guy. But Covert was a high school wrestler in Pennsylvania who had pinned all but one of his opponents his senior year. He was quick and agile. He was one of the quietest guys on the team. He’d been an English major in college. He’d gone to Pitt, my old school, and he was best friends with Danny Marino. But he could be pushed only so far, and you did not want to mess with him.

He slammed McMichael, who would go on to be a pro wrestler—one of those guys hitting other guys over the head with folding chairs and brief-cases—and it showed the defense we weren’t taking any more shit off them. It ended as quickly as it began. There was silence for a bit, and then I blew the whistle and said, “Let’s get back to practice.” You’d be surprised how much that ended the crap.

I coached the offense. Buddy had the defense. That’s just the way it was. But a team doesn’t have two sides, it has one. And the respect has to go back and forth, between everybody. McMichael made our guys better by the way he practiced. Nobody liked it at times. It wasn’t a picnic out there. It was not a walk in the park. We were in pads every day up until Saturday.

The point is we had an offense that controlled the ball for a reason. We knew that if we gave our defense enough time to rest, they could go out and be animals. Who gives a damn if you won 40 to 30 or 10 to nothing? Actually, I like 10 to nothing. So our offense led the league in first downs and time of possession by design. We needed respect. Just
as our defense already had respect.

Buddy was tough on his guys. He ran them, had them do ladder drills, ups-and-downs, and there were times when I’d have to tell him to stop. My offense was conditioned, too, but like with the receivers, they ran their asses off all practice long, so what was the point of running them at the end? But Buddy believed in those whistle drills for his guys. They hated them, but they never, ever quit, because they knew the reason for doing them. The defensive guys were as tough at the end of games as they were on the opening series. They were in shape. Buddy had their total attention and total respect.

As a coach, it was never about me. I had a bad temper and I got crazed at times, but what I wanted was to win. And when a team wins, everybody wins. It’s about challenging the other team, doing everything you can with every bone in your body, because losing is rotten. When I got traded from the Eagles to the Cowboys, I went from being a pretty good individual player to being a team player, because I realized my value was not in catching 60 passes a year—they had guys to do that. What they needed from me was to angle block, pass block, take out linebackers for the runners behind me like Calvin Hill or Duane Thomas or Walt Garrison or Dan Reeves, whoever was carrying the ball. I understood how important I was to the team, not how important I was to myself. That Super Bowl championship ring the Cowboys won in 1971, when we beat Miami 24–3, sure felt good on my finger.

I suppose, right from the get go, teamwork and foresight by other people were part of my pro career. In college I’d played both ways, and the teams that wanted me—Washington, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco—were going to make me play linebacker. But the Bears took me, and the Old Man said, “You’re a tight end.” Did anyone know what a tight end was back then? Not really.

The whole idea of a big guy in close catching a lot of passes was kind of new. We played the Eagles in 1961, and a linebacker named Chuck Weber grabbed me and threw me down. He lined up right over me and forced me outside, and I couldn’t do anything, and then he’d force me in, and the middle linebacker would knock me on my ass. Sometimes both of them would pound me, hold me down. I told Halas, “Those guys are holding me, Coach! Pushing me in, out—I can’t do anything.”

He and Luke Johnsos—the wide receivers coach, but really the offensive coordinator, even though we didn’t have those titles back then—discussed this, and then Halas said to me, “Flex out two to five yards. Put the outside guy on an island. See what he does with that.”

So I flex out on some of the pass plays and some of the runs, almost like a slot. What happens when I run a slant now? If I’m blocking the linebacker on a run, he’s already out of the play. He’s not gonna be a factor. We did it, and it worked. I mean why run through someone when you can run around them? Well, okay, sometimes you just gotta knock the crap out of a guy, because it is football, and kicking ass is fun. But how many
great players are you going to intimidate?

You think you could intimidate Chuck Bednarik? Hah! Break his arm off and he’d throw it at you. How are you going to intimidate Ronnie Lott? Or Dan Hampton? Or Mike Singletary or Walter Payton? You might beat them, but you’re not going to intimidate them, not because they’re scared of what you’re doing. Hell no. You beat the yolk out of people. But you outsmart them, too.

I had run-ins with guys like the Packers’ Ray Nitschke, that bald guy who tried to tear my head off constantly. I had run-ins with a lot of great players. I hit them high, I hit them low—and they hit me that way, too. Bill Pellington, the Colts’ linebacker, was wearing my ass out one game. He was slugging me, and I was slugging him. And finally I ended up with this cloth thing on my arm with a hunk of lead at the end, like a freaking weapon. I ran to the official and said, “That sshole’s trying to kill me with a chunk of lead!”

The ref grabbed it out of my hand and said, “Gimme that, you idiot. It’s my flag!” He threw it at us and it hit my arm. I was so embarrassed.

Pellington looked at me and said, “Ditka, I don’t need lead to beat your sorry ass!”

Anyway, the Patriots game—Game 2 of the regular season—begins and our defense is back to what it should be, an attacking force. The offense had come from behind in the Tampa Bay game to win that one, and now the defense is returning the favor.

They’re going after Eason and the Patriots runners like they’re free beer. It was kind of funny, because on Friday I happened to see this stupid-ass thing called the Dunkel Rating in a newspaper that was lying open. I also saw that our defense was ranked 23rd against the rush, even though it had led the league in rushing defense the year before. One game. Fricking statistics! And this Dunkel thing had the Bears rated only 12th best out of the 28 NFL teams. Fine. Screw ’em all. Dumb-Ass Rating is more like it. We’ll see how it ends.

McMahon started off the game with a 32-yard touchdown pass to Dennis McKinnon, who was still battling back from off-season knee surgery. Dennis was a skinny guy, but like the guys I loved on this team, just tough and nasty, and he’d give you everything he had. That 7–0 lead was all we needed. New England couldn’t do a thing against our defense. They had 27 yards rushing, and Eason got sacked half a dozen times and threw three interceptions. They wouldn’t have scored at all except for a mistake on coverage when fullback Craig James caught a little pass across the middle and outran Wilbur Marshall for a 90-yard score in the fourth quarter. We were up 20–0 before that, and we won 20–7. Take away that pass and they only had 116 net yards. We had 369.

What I liked was the Patriots had six sacks the week before, and they got none against us. Our offensive line of Tom Thayer, Jay Hilgenberg, Keith Van Horne, Jimbo Covert, and Mark Bortz was developing into a cohesive unit. It’s so important to have that communication and camaraderie when blocking, the same guys lining up together day after day, knowing each other’s traits and techniques and
personalities. We had that working now.

The Patriots keyed all game long on Payton, who was a little beaten up going in, and he only gained 39 yards. No problem. That opened up other things, including 37 yards rushing for backup Thomas Sanders and a TD run for Suhey. We also got two field goals from our rookie kicker Kevin Butler, a fourth-round draft pick out of Georgia. Butthead’s addition had meant I had to let vet Bob Thomas go at the end of the preseason. Butler went on to set an NFL rookie scoring record in 1985, so Bob knew what he was up against. But I loved Bob Thomas. He was a great guy. Butler wasn’t any more accurate, but he kicked off much deeper, so there was nothing I could do.

I didn’t like cutting Bob. I never liked that part. I sat down with him, and it was miserable. It’s the hardest thing you do as a coach. When I released defensive lineman Mike Hartenstine after 1986, it broke my heart. But there’s a time when it has to happen, and you’re the only one who can do it. Nobody teaches you how. I watched Coach Landry do it, and I watched him break down. I’d hear him tell a coach, “I’m keeping this man because he’s a better football player, but I’m cutting a man who has so much more character.” Oh, it hurt him!

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.