In the two
weeks between the Bears’ dismantling of the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game and their date with destiny in
Super Bowl XX, Chicagoans were guardedly optimistic. Their teams had a history
of near misses and other failures that made it impossible for many fans to fully
savor the ride on which the Bears were taking them.
The Bears
themselves were confident that they could not lose. Oddsmakers made them double-digit favorites, and the
Bears swaggered into New Orleans
as conquering heroes. Certainly no team ever entered the Super Bowl with a more
colorful cast of characters. Their propensity for unpredictable quotes made the
Bears an ongoing media event. One New
Orleans sportscaster—not content with the actual outrageous statements of the
Bears—falsely reported that quarterback Jim McMahon had called the local women “a bunch of
sluts.” This was a rare instance in which the controversial McMahon was blameless.
However, he did moon photographers at
a workout to show them, he said, the part of his anatomy that was being treated
with acupuncture.
The AFC
champion New England Patriots were almost forgotten in the general hubbub
surrounding the Bears. It wasn’t that the Patriots weren’t deserving (they had
won 12 of their last 14 games); it was just that they weren’t the Miami Dolphins—with
whom the Bears wished to settle accounts. But the Dolphins hadn’t made it to New Orleans, and the
Patriots would have to do.
In a meeting
of the Bears’ defensive coaches and players the night before the Super Bowl,
Buddy Ryan all but confirmed the rumors that he was leaving to become head coach of
the Philadelphia Eagles. “Whatever happens tomorrow,” he told the players, “I
want you to know that you’re my heroes.” He then left the room, overcome with
emotion. The group began watching some film of the Patriots. After just a few
minutes, Dan Hampton
concluded that the session had gone on long enough. He kicked the projector off
its stand. Steve McMichael then hurled a chair through the chalkboard on which some
plays had been diagrammed. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” said Hampton. Without anyone
saying another word, the players all got up and walked out of the room. The meeting
was over, and the Bears were ready.
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| “I’LL MEET YOU GUYS AT THE QUARTERBACK.” |
Once the
game started, New England had a brief glimmer
of hope. On the second play of the game, Walter Payton fumbled at the Bears’
19-yard line
and the Patriots recovered. “Here we go again,” thought all the
Chicagoans
who’d learned from bitter experience not to trust their teams too much.
But New England quarterback Tony Eason misfired on three pass
attempts, and the Patriots settled for a field goal.
Although
they were behind 3-0 with the game barely a minute old, it was already
perfectly
plain by now that the Bears would win. The Patriots had no more idea how
to
move the ball against them than they’d had four months earlier, when
they rushed for only 27 yards in a 20-7 loss at Soldier Field.
Convinced
by
the September 15 game that his team couldn’t run on the Bears, New
England coach Raymond Berry felt he had no choice but
to come out throwing. Therefore, Eason felt the full force of the Bears’
merciless
pass rush on almost every play. In the Bears’ defensive huddle, Hampton said, “I’ll meet you guys at the quarterback.”
“We knew that if we got them into a
passing
situation,” Mike Singletary said, “we’d have things wrapped up.”
The Bears’
next two possessions resulted in field goals by Kevin Butler. Then Richard Dent stripped the ball from
Patriots running back Craig James, and Singletary pounced on it at the New England 13. Two plays later, Matt Suhey carried 11 yards
for a touchdown.
At the end
of the first quarter, the Bears led 13-3. New England
had run ten plays for minus-19 yards. “It was like trying to beat back the tide
with a broom,” said Patriots guard Ron Wooten. The second quarter saw more of
the same. “I tried to scramble,” Eason said, “but there was no place to go.”
The Patriots simply could not block the Bear defenders. Eason was 0-for-6
passing and had been sacked three times when he was removed from the game, for
his own good, five minutes before halftime.
It was 23-3
at the intermission. By now even the most pessimistic Chicagoan must have known
that nothing could stop the Bears. “It’s the men against the boys out there,”
said NBC analyst Pete Axthelm.
Veteran
Steve Grogan replaced the shell-shocked Eason and fared somewhat better, but
the Bears continued to pour it on. McMahon hit Willie Gault for 60 yards on their
first play of the second half; he concluded the 96-yard drive eight plays later
with a quarterback sneak from one yard out. A 28-yard interception return by
Reggie Phillips and a one-yard plunge by William Perry gave the Bears their last two
touchdowns.
The score
was 44-3 when head coach Mike Ditka called off the dogs and replaced his starters early in the
fourth quarter. New England finally scored a
touchdown on an eight-yard pass from Grogan to Irving Fryar after a 12-play drive
against the Bears’ second-team defense. Later, an obscure defensive end named
Henry Waechter ended the day’s scoring when he sacked Grogan in the end zone
for a safety.
Ditka took a lot of flak for not trying harder to get Payton a touchdown at some
point—especially since Perry, the coach’s favorite
novelty act, got the chance to score from the one-yard line in the third
quarter. Ditka admitted that he should have realized before it was too late
that Payton hadn’t scored in the game. But it was difficult to see how a token
touchdown in a blowout game, even if it was the Super Bowl, would have added
much luster to Payton’s incomparable career. What really mattered was that he and
his teammates were world champions.
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RYAN AND DITKA ARE CARRIED OFF THE FIELD.
|
When it was
over, both Ditka and Ryan were carried off the field in triumph. The Bears had
been splendid on both sides of the ball, and the final score of 46-10 made it
the most lopsided Super Bowl up to that time. Practically any one of a dozen
Bears could have taken MVP honors, which ended up going to Dent.
McMahon, for example, passed to six different receivers for 256 yards and ran
for two touchdowns, while Gault caught four balls for 129 yards. Ryan’s defenders
disrupted everything that New England tried to do, limiting the Patriots to a
mere 123 yards on offense—seven on the ground. “It will be
many years,” Paul Zimmerman wrote in Sports
Illustrated, “before we see anything approaching the vision of hell that Chicago inflicted on the
poor New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX. It was near perfect, an exquisite
mesh of talent and system, defensive football carried to its highest degree. It
was a great roaring wave that swept through the playoffs, gathering force and
momentum until it finally crashed home in New
Orleans’ Superdome in pro football’s showcase game.”
After
exceeding even the wildest dreams of their fans all season, the Bears outdid
themselves when it mattered most. In three postseason games, they scored 91
points and yielded only 10. Their opponents averaged fewer than 145 yards per
game and converted three third downs
out of 36.
The 1985
Bears showed football fans a level of excellence that had seldom been attained.
They talked big, played bigger, and shuffled into a place in history.
Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.
