Ditka Makes the Play of His Life

 

On November 24, 1963, the Bears went into Pittsburgh for a crucial game against the Steelers. The Bears held a narrow lead in the Western Division over the NFL’s two-time defending champions, the Green Bay Packers, whom they had soundly beaten the week before. At 9-1, they were poised for a run at their first championship in 17 years. What should have been a thrilling time for the Bears and their fans, however, had been marred by a stunning tragedy—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy less than 48 hours before the Bears were scheduled to play Pittsburgh. 

Despite suggestions that he do so, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle chose not to postpone that weekend’s games. “Everyone has a different way of paying respects,” he said on Sunday. “I went to church today, and I imagine many of the people at the games did, too. I cannot feel that playing the games was disrespectful nor can I feel that I have made a mistake.” Later, though, Rozelle called the decision the worst mistake of his life.

The Bears-Steelers game, like all those in the league that day, would be played in a virtual vacuum, since all television and radio coverage was focused on the nation’s mourning of the late President. The Bears were tuned in along with millions of their fellow citizens when news came that the President’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had himself been shot to death in the Dallas police headquarters. In the locker room at Forbes Field, coach George Halas ordered the radio switched off and implored his players to concentrate on the game at hand.

MIKE DITKA

 

The Steelers came into the game 6-3-1, and still had a slim chance to win the Eastern Division and with it a berth in the NFL championship game. It was a must game for both teams, and they played like it. The sellout crowd of 36,465 was treated to a tough, seesaw battle. The teams traded touchdowns in the first half and went into halftime tied 14-14. The third quarter was scoreless, thanks to two missed field-goal attempts by Pittsburgh’s Lou Michaels. Finally, Michaels connected from 11 yards out to give the Steelers a 17-14 lead early in the fourth quarter. Charlie Bivins’s fumble of the ensuing kickoff was recovered by Pittsburgh on the Chicago 12-yard line, apparently dooming the Bears—but the Steelers were called for offsides on the play.

The Bears got another chance. With less than five minutes remaining, though, they found themselves with a second-and-36 from their own 22-yard line. By now they knew that the Packers had beaten the 49ers 28-10 in Milwaukee. A loss would drop the Bears into a first-place tie with the defending champs.

The Bears’ leading ground gainers, Joe Marconi and Willie Galimore, were being shut down; they would combine for fewer than 90 yards all day. Quarterback Bill Wade was thus forced to go to the air, and he had been intercepted three times already. “Throw the ball to me,” Mike Ditka told Wade in the huddle, “and I’ll try to run with it.” The Bears’ tight end ran a hook pattern, and Wade hit him about five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. The first Steeler to hit Ditka, defensive back Clendon Thomas, was also the one who brought him down—63 yards downfield from their initial point of contact. In between, Ditka literally ran over almost every defender on the field. At midfield, three Steelers converged from different angles, all hitting Ditka simultaneously. Only Ditka was on his feet after the collision, still charging toward the goal line. Thomas eventually wrestled him down at the Pittsburgh 15. “I lost my legs,” Ditka said after the game, unhappy that he hadn’t gone all the way. “They were completely dead. I had just run pass patterns on the three previous plays, and suddenly I found myself in the clear with the ball. I kept looking for somebody to lateral to, but nobody showed up.”

Ditka needn’t have apologized. “One of the greatest individual efforts I have seen in 40 years of football,” said Halas. “They had him stopped a half dozen times, but his feet never stopped churning.” The play, which became a staple of NFL Films highlight reels, set up the field goal by Roger Leclerc that gave the Bears a hard-earned 17-17 tie and kept them in first place.

The Bears won two and tied one of their three remaining regular-season games to finish at 11-1-2, an eyelash ahead of Green Bay's 11-2-1 for the Western Division title. On December 29, the Bears defeated the New York Giants for the world championship--which remains to this day one of only two they have captured since 1946.

 

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