The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest (8 page)

As the 1985 season approached, the Bears were evolving into a team with as much personality as football talent. It was a good thing Platteville was far away from major civilization, because there was a sense that Ditka’s odd crew might not have withstood close scrutiny from discreet society or perhaps even the law.

Second Street was the name of the Platteville lane with the bars frequented by the Bears after hours. Players could do almost anything, according to Ditka rule, as long as they didn’t get arrested or hurt. Pranks and acting crazy were fine, as long as nobody blew out a knee, ripped a hammy, broke a bone. There is a photo taken during spring practice before the team left for Platteville, and it shows the dynamic backfield tandem of fullback Matt Suhey and tailback Walter Payton getting set before a play. The interesting part is that Payton has the startled Suhey’s gym shorts waistband in his hand, pulling it down low and back like a slingshot. Ditka didn’t care. All he wanted was to win.

Platteville is Platteville,
you know what I mean? The first couple years we’d played in Lake Forest, and there were too many kids and mothers and all that around. Hangers-on everywhere. I thought we could bond better up in the boondocks. I know the guys went out at night. They had fun, and that was okay. They weren’t a bunch of saints. John Madden used to have a coaching philosophy that went like this: be on time, pay attention, and play like hell. And that pretty much sums it up. I know Van Horne
almost killed himself on that scooter, but when I was playing, I remember we were running across a field trying to get away from the cops who were chasing us, and a couple of the guys tripped over wires strung between two posts and almost broke their legs in half. That’s football. There’s a time to play and a time to have fun. If it’s all drudgery, I don’t think you can win. I mean, these guys aren’t wimps. They are who they are. Even a stoic guy like Tom Landry, my coach when I was in Dallas, let guys have fun. Actually, he didn’t know what guys were doing. He could have known, but he didn’t want to know. That’s a choice. That was “America’s Team” with this clean-cut image. But the things guys were doing were off the charts. Still, we showed up every day, practiced our butts off, and played like hell on Sundays. That’s what I wanted from my guys.

“Coach, who are you kidding? My philosophy is exactly the same as yours. My philosophy is to make the Bears something special, and to kick people’s asses!”

—Ditka to George Halas

Looking back at all these clippings from 1985, I can see that we were like a three-ring circus. There was something going on every day. I didn’t read the papers back then, so I had no idea how nuts things were. But I know I tried to deflect some of the attention onto me, because I didn’t want the players under any pressure except to go out and play. If the press thought I was an ass, fine. Didn’t bother me. I was on a mission from the moment I took the job.

And the success could have happened sooner. I blew the first game I coached in 1982, up there in Detroit, by not scoring from the 1-yard line, twice! It made me feel bad, but it made Mr. Halas feel a hell of a lot worse. And I wanted to please him. I wanted him to know I was worthy and a Bear through and through.

My first week as coach I gathered everybody together and said, “This is going to be a good news-bad news announcement. The good news is
we are going to win the Super Bowl. The bad news is a lot of you who don’t care enough aren’t going to be with us when it happens.” I meant that. We had a lot of selfish guys back in 1982, but I knew the Fenciks and Paytons and Suheys and Hamptons would be with me.

See, George Halas embodied the Bears, and I wanted to embody them, too. Not many people know this, but in 1978 I wrote Mr. Halas a letter. I was the special teams coach for the Cowboys, and I was no big deal. Maybe I was a little wild. But what I said in the letter was, “We didn’t part on the best of terms when you traded me, but I would love to come back some day, back to Chicago, and be the head coach. I’m not ready yet, but I will be some day. I’ll bring back Chicago Bears tradition and pride. I promise.”

Sid Luckman, the great old Bears quarterback, told me Halas always kept that letter. Sid and Mr. Halas were best friends. See, for me, it was the Bears only. I wanted nothing else. It was my ultimate goal. Just the Bears. That and winning the Super Bowl.

A few years went by, and then after the Cowboys lost to the 49ers in the 1981 playoffs, a really tough game where Dwight Clark made that great catch from Montana in the end zone, Coach Landry called me into his office.

“There’s somebody who wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

“George Halas of the Bears.”

It excited the hell out of me. Tom gave me his blessing, and I got on a plane to Chicago. It was all cloak and dagger there, with Halas’s right-hand man Max Swiatek, his driver and longtime helper, picking me up at the airport and taking me to Halas’s place at the Edgewater Beach condos up on the north side near Lake Michigan. We sat at the kitchen table and he asked me some stuff. I was really keyed up, and I knew it wasn’t him when he said, “What’s your philosophy about football?”

“Coach, who are you kidding?” I said. “My philosophy is exactly the same as yours. My philosophy is to make the Bears something special, and to kick people’s asses!”

He just nodded. He looked right at me. He said, “Okay, I’m going to give you a three-year contract to be our new head coach. One hundred thousand dollars a year. That’s it.”

I said, “No.”

He was stunned. “What do you mean? You can’t do it?”

“No,” I said. “I will do it. But I have to have a 15 percent raise each year.”

I thought I was really being cool. Hell, that would still make me one of the lowest-paid coaches in the league. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about money. Nobody else had offered me anything. It was just something to show I was my own man.

So he gave me the deal—$100,000, $115,000, $130,000—and we shook hands, signed the contract, and that was that. But what I really wanted was his respect. I meant it when I wrote that letter. I felt the Bears were my destiny. And George Halas was the Bears. His son Mugs Halas had died, and that left George’s only other child, Virginia, and all her children as heirs to the family business.

But I knew deep inside he believed in me, the outsider, the old tight end. I think he believed that I was a lot like him. When he was lying in the hospital a year or so later, there were only two people he wanted to see—his secretary, Ruth, and me. Nobody else. I talked to him about the players we had just drafted. I told him he’d like Covert, that he was kind of similar to old-time star Joe Stydahar, and the Old Man liked that. He was very sick at that time, but he told Ruth to give me a special bottle of champagne he had. “Give this to Mike,” he told her. “For when they win the Super Bowl.”

It makes me sad because the bottle is out there on the wall, in a place of honor in my restaurant, and he wasn’t alive when we opened it.

But I didn’t know what was going to happen. I told the players they deserved to win it all, but nobody could foresee the future.

We came out for the opening game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and we felt we were in a good position. Platteville had been hot and tough, and Buddy had his defensive unit in good shape from all of the running they did. My guys, the offense, were ready to go, too, especially since McMahon was back for his first start since the kidney injury the previous November. I figured beer must have been part of his cure. Maybe it filtered out the bad stuff.

We were favored by a touchdown or so, partly because the Bucs were playing in Chicago, partly because our defense was so good, and partly because their star defender, Lee Roy Selmon, was out. We’d set the NFL sack record the year before, so everybody was sure our defense would dominate.

But it didn’t. We gave up 28 points in the first two quarters, over 300 yards in the game, and were down 21–7 early and then 28–17 at the half. It was September 8, and it was hotter than blazes on our artificial turf at Soldier Field, something like 137 degrees at turf level. Maybe that’s why the fans booed us when we came off at the half, because they were roasting. But I don’t think so. We weren’t playing as a unit. This offensive and defensive split wasn’t good. We had to be one.

Fortunately, McMahon was on target, and Payton was running the way he could. Walter carried the ball 17 times for 120 yards, and Jim completed 23 of 34 passes for 274 yards and two TDs. He also ran for two scores and didn’t hurt his kidney in the process, for which I was thankful. It was nice the offense bailed out our defense for once. In fact, that helped us all, because, like I said, there was some tension between the two sides. And it was nice that McMahon got NFC Player of the Week honors for leading the charge. But it wasn’t a game to be thrilled about. I was proud that our offense proved it could strike back. But we all knew we needed that D if we were going to go anywhere.

If we had lost that game, people would have said, “I told you so! You bums were nothing but a flash in the pan! San Francisco sucked you dry!”‘

I thought back to the previous three years I’d been coaching the Bears. At the beginning we were losing all of these games we should have won. It worried me. But then we had Bob Avellini playing quarterback, and he was one of the biggest screw-ups I’d ever met. I had no idea what he’d do.

We’re playing out in Seattle in 1984, and Avellini is starting because McMahon—guess
what?—is already out with an injury. We’re ahead, 7–0, Payton’s averaging over five yards a carry, and it’s second and 4, and we have a nice play called. Oh yeah, we’re undefeated at the time—3–0. Then I hear Ed Hughes, our offensive coordinator, standing next to me, say, “Oh, no.”

“What, Ed?” I yell.

“The son of a bitch is audibleing!”

Avellini audibles to a hitch, from a fly pattern with max protection, and the Seattle cornerback picks the ball off on a dead run and he’s going so fast in the other direction for a touchdown he nearly breaks his neck when he hits the end zone wall. Bob comes out of the game, which we went on to lose, 38–9, and I say—shit, I am trembling—“Bob, why would you do that, son?”

“Well, I thought—”

I was going to kill him. Right there. Tear his flesh off like a jackal. I was so mad my neck veins had veins.

—Ditka on Bob Avellini

“Don’t THINK!” I scream. “Please. Don’t.” Then I add, “Bob, if you ever do that again you will never—ever—EVER—play another down for me! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

He nods.

Then we’re up in Green Bay the next year, and he does the same exact damn thing. I was purple. I was green. I was subhuman.