The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest (7 page)
Read The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest Online
Authors: Mike Ditka,Rick Telander
There in Platteville we came together, because there wasn’t anyplace to go. We had a pig roast or something and the cornfields were all around. Some of the guys rode scooters everywhere, and I guess that was a little risky. One year Van Horne, a huge guy at six foot eight, ran into a rope across a sidewalk or something, and if he hadn’t been so tall he might have been decapitated. As it was, he just got some nice rope burns on his biceps.
We knew we were a pretty good team in 1984. And in 1985 we knew we were better, even if we had issues. Screw the issues.
We were ready to kick ass.
McMahon’s McMiracle
T
his was the game that most point to as the difference-maker, the game that may have saved a season and certainly made the legend of Jim McMahon.
The Bears went into Minnesota with both division rivals sitting at 2–0. And for the second time in three games, the Bears would need a rescue.
It did not figure to come from McMahon.
The quarterback had spent two nights in traction for his back problems and was suffering from a leg infection. He didn’t practice in the short week leading up to the Thursday night game, and, despite McMahon’s insistence that he would play, Mike Ditka had rules to the contrary.
McMahon had been injured late in the 1984 season and hadn’t played in the Bears’ playoff games against Washington or San Francisco. So in games of this magnitude, he remained an unknown commodity.
All that changed midway through the third quarter. With 7:32 to play and the Bears trailing 17–9, McMahon was in Ditka’s ear along the sideline and finally persuaded the coach to send him in to replace Steve Fuller, who had simply been unable to spark a team that was being outplayed on both sides of the ball.
The Bears had taken leads in the first and second quarters with Kevin Butler field goals, but Minnesota went ahead 10–6 at halftime on a 14-yard pass from Tommy Kramer to Anthony Carter. Butler kicked a third field goal, but another Kramer TD pass boosted Minnesota to a 17–9 lead.
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
His effort off bench is one to remember
Jim McMahon’s three touchdown passes in a span of 6:40 in the third quarter.
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.
GARY FENCIK
No. 45, safety
“D
itka 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.”
