The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest (20 page)

“T
he championship game with the Rams, seeing the snow coming down, the guys are happy because you know you’re going to the Super Bowl. To be at home and feel the enjoyment that was taking place was awesome.”

“I’m sure the Patriots knew it was over before they got there.”

“In certain formations and certain things they would get into, myself or Mike [Singletary] or [Dan] Hampton would call that play out, and you’d see their guys looking at each other.”

“I think Mike Ditka always kept us on the edge. He had ways of getting us ready. Some of the things, we didn’t see eye to eye on—some of the ways in trying to motivate me that I didn’t appreciate. But outside of that, we had a good time.”

“Buddy [Ryan] put the game in our hands. He put the game plan in our hands. You don’t see that much today. You see it maybe with Peyton Manning. You see it mostly on the offensive side. You don’t see it on the defensive side.”

“You think about things like not letting teams score, negative yards at halftime—you just don’t see that. Some of the things we did, you just don’t see. And the point of it was that you shared some things with some guys that were very rare.”

“The way people look at us and this particular team—how much we won, how well we played, how well we entertained people—people think we won three, four Super Bowls. We had that caliber of team. We tampered with the quarterback position a lot.”

“I thought we should’ve won more Super Bowls. We lost a couple opportunities there with [Doug] Flutie.”

“I’m an eighth-rounder, and when you’re drafted in that position, you’re there for a couple years until they find something better. In this case, they found something great.”

“You’re trying to figure out a guy’s weakness, and what I would do is work on his weakness. In
your eyes, you think I’m taking a play off. But you don’t understand the game, so you wouldn’t know what I’m doing. I spend my week working on things where a guy’s weak.”

“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.”