by Rich Cohen
“How do you think the ’85 Bears would do if they were playing today?”
“We’d still be kicking ass. Maybe we wouldn’t win a Super Bowl, but you have to remember, some of us are pushing sixty!”
It’s an old joke, and we both laughed. Then I asked McMahon if he still works out. Plank is in the gym several times a week, titanium shoulders and all. Fencik is all over the North Side on his bike. But Mac laughed. “I haven’t worked out in ten, twelve years,” he told me. “There’s not much I can do. I know I’ve got to do something. I’m fuckin’ feeling bad. But when I start to work out, I’m like, There’s nobody hitting me anymore, so why am I doing this? I did it for so long, it was my life for thirty-some years. It felt good to take the last few years off.”
I asked if he could still throw. I had brought a football. It was in my car. I had just reread Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, published almost twenty years after the ’55 Dodgers won the World Series—a stretch similar to the one that separated Super Bowl XX from my discussions with the ’85 Bears. Kahn ended many interviews by asking some ancient Dodger to play catch. He would stand in the gloaming and toss a ball with a faded star. As he did, the years would fall away and the old men would again be as they had been on those dusky Ebbets Field afternoons, and Kahn, in the middle of life, would be as he’d been as a boy in the bleachers, when his heroes strode across the field like figures painted on a Greek vase.
I figured I’d do the same: me and Mac throwing the pill as the light went down. But football is not baseball, and the men I interviewed had been damaged by injury, consumed by surgery, recovery, implant, arthritis, depression. A few were all right, but many more were as dilapidated as old shotgun houses. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman objects to the indignity of capitalist America: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away,” he says, “a man is not a piece of fruit!” But that’s exactly what did happen to Willy Loman, and to a lot of old football players. Their youth is gone, and now only the peel remains, a husk filled with memories.
When I asked Mac if he wanted to play catch, he grimaced. “I haven’t thrown in years,” he told me. “My shoulder hurts so bad I can’t even throw my car keys.”
He sat a moment, then, hearing his friends in the pool, sighed, and said, “I’d better get back.”
He stood slowly, painfully, unfolding one joint at a time, then walked me out. “When you see the boys,” he said, “tell ’em Mac says hello.” Then, in the way of Colombo saving the best question for that moment when he stands with his trench coat in the doorway, I asked McMahon if it had been worth it. “Knowing what we know, about the injuries and the brain and CTE?”
He smiled and said, “I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.”
13
STAR-CROSSED IN MIAMI
A typical position for backup quarterback Steve Fuller—on his ass, getting nothing done—during the Bears’ worst game of the season: December 2, 1985, when Don Shula and the Dolphins lay in ambush
By Thanksgiving 1985, it looked as if the Bears might never lose another game. The defense was only getting stronger. In addition to Buddy’s 46, opposing players had to master their own fear. “Before teams played the Bears, they weren’t even thinking about winning,” said Rex Ryan. “They were just hoping to survive—they didn’t want to get the crap kicked out of ’em. The ’85 Bears had teams beat before they even played.”
All of which drew special attention to the Dolphins game, played December 2, 1985, at the Orange Bowl. The 1972 Dolphins remain the only NFL team to go unbeaten in the regular season and playoffs, then win the Super Bowl. The veterans of that team, which won Super Bowl VII, let it be known that they did not want the Bears to match their record. They converged on Miami; they’d cheer from the ramparts as Don Shula and Dan Marino fought off the hordes. Before the game—it drew the largest audience in the history of Monday Night Football—you could see the old warriors dressed in sports coats and slacks, broad-chested men flashing Super Bowl rings, shoving those jeweled monstrosities right down the throat of the cameras.
In ways that would become clear, the game had been arranged as a kind of ambush. In a Western, the Kiowa scout would take one look at the shadows emerging from the tall grass and scream, “Run!” The players and coaches, the mood of each team, the tenor of practices—it gave you a queasy feeling. For starters, there were all those ’72 Dolphins, Bob Griese, Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris, who, in themselves, meant nothing—Csonka wasn’t going to play—but suggested how badly the Dolphins wanted the game. Then there were the Bears—Hampton, McMichael, Wilson—who seemed almost haughty, certain they could not be beaten. Then there was Miami itself: the sun and the umbrellaed cocktails, the girls on the beach where many of the Bears spent Monday afternoon, drinking and laughing and studying the line where the water went from turquoise to aqua. Then Ditka, who wanted to prove something, wanted to show that his offense was more than Walter left, Walter right, Walter up the middle. He’d beaten Landry and now wanted to beat that other deity, Don Shula, and do it in a way the maestro would understand.
And don’t forget Buddy, who rode into Miami like Custer, painfully unaware that he faced karmic payback. Shula had been the coach of the Baltimore team that Ryan, then with the Jets, helped defeat in Super Bowl III. For that game, Shula, young and stupidly ignorant of life’s vicissitudes, had not prepared a plan, believing that whatever had been good enough to beat superior teams in the NFL would be more than enough for the Jets. He went in arrogant, picturing ticker tape and flowers. This time, it was Buddy who came in without a plan: in the previous weeks, the Bears had dominated, defeating Dallas and Atlanta by a combined score of 80–0. Buddy figured that whatever had undone the Cowboys would work on Miami. He’d come full circle: he was back in a big game, only now he was on the other sideline, among those who believe themselves invulnerable. As Buddy boasted about his defense, Shula was in his lab with eyepiece and slide rule, solving the riddle of the 46.
In every story of hubris, there’s an ominous hint, which the hero, had he not been so intoxicated, might have heeded. For Buddy, it came from Jimbo Covert, a guard who protected McMahon on the line, a task he’d once performed for Marino at Pitt. Spotting Covert after practice, Ryan said, “We’re going to blitz your buddy and knock him on his ass.”
“If you do that,” Covert said, “he’ll kill you.”
“That night, the Orange Bowl was the loudest stadium I’ve ever been in,” Brian Baschnagel told me. “I was hurt, so they had me in the coach’s box. I got such a headache from all that noise. It was deafening. The crowd was as rambunctious as they possibly could be. Everyone knew what was on line: Miami’s undefeated season. We weren’t intimidated, but it was intense, and kooky things happened. It was a star-crossed night.”
McMahon was out of the lineup, hurt. With what? Who remembers? It seemed like he was wounded half the time. It was the shoulder, the back, the knees, the hand, the brain rattling in the skull fluid, the kidney, the water bed palsy.
Steve Fuller started at quarterback. He’d yet to throw a touchdown pass that season. The Bears defense would have to keep the score low. The Dolphins came onto the field, the stadium rocking. I remember Mercury Morris, a dazzling runner from the ’72 team, screaming at Marino, urging him on. In 1983, when Morris should have been playing, he’d been in prison, sent away on a cocaine conspiracy charge, though the conviction was later overturned. I met him shortly after he’d been freed. He was big, shiny, and dark. His hands were as rough as leather. He told me the penitentiary had been so near the Orange Bowl that, lying in his cell on Sunday afternoons, he could hear the crowd. I asked to see his Super Bowl ring. He dropped it in my palm. It was an anchor, crusted with gunk.
Miami scored on its first drive. This hardly ever happened to the Bears that season. Marino did it by rolling away from the pass rush, then finding receiver Nat Moore downfield, where he was being covered by linebacker Wilber Marshall. Linebackers are big, and even the best have t
rouble keeping up with a speedy receiver—it was a mismatch that Miami would exploit. To a Bears fan, that first TD seemed like a fluke—until Marino did it again.
Miami had the worst rush defense in football, but Ditka kept calling pass plays. Some players believed he was trying to prove something to Shula. Coaches speak to each other in code. But Fuller could never keep up with Marino, who picked apart the Bears’ defense with freakish ease.
How did it happen?
As I said, Shula had a plan, a solution to the 46. Rather than try to outmuscle the Bears, he used their own strength against them. Football jujitsu. No one can beat the 46? Fine. Let’s let the 46 beat itself. He accomplished this with a series of plays in which the Dolphins’ linemen were told, in essence, to let the Bears rushers through, step aside as they converged on the pocket. But when they got there, Marino, having rolled away from Richard Dent, was gone. It gave the QB a few extra seconds, just enough time to exploit the unsoundness of the 46. Marino found receivers uncovered, or covered by the wrong kind of players. “I’ll give Shula credit,” Singletary wrote. “He played us for suckers. The game began and sure enough he sucked us in, showing a huge opening up the middle, through which we so magnanimously entered, only to be swallowed up by converging linemen.”
It was a strategy perfectly suited to Marino, who had the quickest release in football—the ball left his hand superfast. “He was able to get outside the pocket and buy time,” Plank told me. “I don’t care what defense you’re running, everything breaks down after six seconds. If the offense can get a receiver in the flat, it becomes individual matchups. And they had great receivers, and Marino made great throws. It was the pass rush that failed the Bears that night.”
“The Dolphins beat us because the 46 was predicated on getting to the quarterback before he could do anything,” said Wrightman. “Marino was known to have the quickest release in the game. That’s what beat us. He could get rid of the ball faster than our guys could get to him. He’s the one guy that could have done it.”
Even a Bears fan had to respect what Shula had done: he was a coach with a weaker team but a better plan. “There’s a reason Shula’s in the Hall of Fame,” Tyrone Keys told me. “He did things we’d never seen before.”
When Ditka realized what was happening—the defense had been tricked, forced into mismatches—he told Buddy to switch from the 46 to the “nickel,” in which five defensive backs drop into pass coverage. “Mind your own damn business,” Buddy shouted. “It’s my defense.”
“The Bears did not go with any nickel defense against our three-wide-receiver set until very late in the third quarter,” Shula said later. “They played what they’d always played, because it had killed everybody else. Of course, everybody else didn’t have Marino at quarterback. And Moore was great catching the ball against one-on-one coverage. Whenever I’m at a speaking engagement, I tell the audience that the best half of football I ever saw was what we did against the Bears that night.”
* * *
The Bears stormed into the locker room at halftime, cleats clattering on cement. Thirty-one to ten: more points than the 46 had given up in its six previous games combined. Ditka was on Buddy’s heels.
Goddamn it, Buddy, you stubborn fuck! Your defense ain’t working. Wilber can’t cover Nat Moore. Put in the fucking nickel.
Stick it up your ass, Ditka!
Fuck you, Buddy! Get somebody out there that can cover Moore!
As the players reached the lockers, Buddy turned on Ditka. He was red faced; the men went nose to nose. From there, the reports fork into competing narratives. In some, the players pull their coaches apart; in others, punches are thrown. Ditka denied it, proof being: If we had fought, I’d have whipped his ass. You saw Buddy. Did it look like his ass had been whipped? “It was a big [fight], no question,” Ditka said. “I told him very simply, ‘You want to go outside right now, we go. We can do it any way you want to do it. We can go right out back and get it on, or you can shape your ass up.’”
This moment, Ditka and Ryan face-to-face, is the core of the ’85 season: each coach represented an opposing tradition. Ditka was a pragmatist. He’d excelled as a player and had nothing to prove physically. He wanted only to win and would employ any system that worked. Ryan was a visionary. Having never made it on the field, he was determined to leave his mark on the game’s history. As an intellectual, he had staked his legacy on one big idea: the 46 defense. He would win with it or go down in a blaze of glory. Merely good on their own, these men were world-class together—they complemented each other—which would have been great had they not also despised each other. It was this hatred that gave the team its edge.
“Ditka was right,” said Hampton. “He was basically saying, ‘Buddy, quit being an asshole and put the nickel back in there on Nat Moore. Wilber can’t do it. Buddy thought Wilber could jump over buildings, but he was getting his ass wore out.”
“I think Buddy’s pride got in the way, and we paid for it,” said offensive tackle Keith Van Horne.
In the third quarter, the Bears finally started to play like the Bears. After scoring 31 points in the first half, the Dolphins would get just one more touchdown. But how that touchdown came about told you everything. “It was in the second half,” said Fencik. “Mike Richardson, our left corner, got a real good break on the ball. Maybe he could have intercepted it, but the ball hit Hampton’s helmet, changed direction, sailed over Hampton, sailed over Richardson, sailed over me, and landed in the hands of a Miami receiver, who was like, Where did this come from? [and] turned and ran into the end zone. I remember walking off the field with Dan [Hampton], laughing and saying, ‘You know what? It’s just not happening tonight.’”
Steve Fuller was knocked out in the fourth. Mac snapped on his chin strap and went in, sparking dreams of gunfight glory. Whenever I watch this stretch on DVD, part of me thinks that this time will be different. As McMahon moves downfield, I almost believe that history will change, and the Bears will come back, and be undefeated.
Ditka kept sending in pass plays, but, near the end, when the game was clearly lost, McMahon changed them to runs: Payton left, Payton right, Payton up the middle. Ditka screamed at his quarterback on the sidelines: What the fuck are you doing?
“We’re not gonna win,” said McMahon, “so let’s get Wally his hundred yards.” Payton was on track to break O. J. Simpson’s consecutive hundred-yard-games record.
“Is he close?” asked Ditka, calming down.
“Very.”
“Okay, you’re right, let’s do it.”
(Payton would rush for 121 yards that night.)
The Bears changed in silence after the game, hurried to the airport, flew home to Chicago. They arrived to the stillness of 3:00 a.m. freeways, water towers and factories, glass buildings in the distance. In the coming weeks, various theories were posited to explain the loss. According to Buddy Ryan, it was a fluke: “We get a punt blocked before the half, and they end up scoring. Another time we had ’em third-and-long, Hampton’s rushing the passer, and the ball hits Dan in the helmet. It goes up in the air about forty feet, and one of their guys catches it for a touchdown.” According to Otis Wilson, Ditka, who insisted on passing when Walter could have gotten the needed points on the ground, was to blame. “Walter had a hundred-plus yards rushing, but Ditka had to match Marino. But you don’t match Marino.” According to McMichael, it was the result of too much partying. McMahon had been on the beach all day and some players said he reeked of beer in the huddle. “There was no doubt in my mind, if we’d have played the Dolphins at twelve o’clock on a Sunday, we’d have beat the shit out of them.” Ditka’s explanation was most succinct. It was honesty in defeat that made him a better headman than Buddy: “What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. We were out-coached.”
* * *
In retrospect, the loss was probably a good thing. A thumping was exactly what the team needed to pop the bubble of overconfidence. It got the attention of the players and
made them realize they were not invincible.
The NFL is obsessed with winning: in no other sport do you hear such frequent mention of that word. Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Ditka said, “My coaching philosophy is the same as yours. I want to win.” Halas said, “Never go to bed a loser.” The best baseball team loses sixty or so games a year. In hockey and basketball, the championship is decided in a seven-game series, meaning you can lose three times in the last week and still hoist the trophy. Football’s too rough for that—it takes days to recover from an hour on the field. A single loss at the wrong moment ends everything. In such a world, if you have to lose, it’s better to do it early. The ’85 Bears will not go undefeated? Good. Let them focus on the games that matter. “Losing to Miami was the best thing that could have happened,” Tim Wrightman told me. “Now that the undefeated thing was off our back, we were all like, To hell with it, let’s just go out and get our fucking Super Bowl rings.”
It was the morning following the loss in Miami—just a few hours after the team plane had touched down—that the Bears shot the video for their ridiculously boastful “Super Bowl Shuffle.” The players had recorded the song a month before. It was Willie Gault’s project, his way out of the life, as the gangsters say. He’d been a world-class sprinter in college, a member of the 1980 Olympic team that had missed the games because of America’s boycott. He was the Bears’ deep threat, the speedster who stretched the defense. His game expressed his character: elegant but soft, a zipperoo-deficient blur of speed. He shied away from contact and sometimes dropped the ball in big situations. Then, just as you were about to give up, he would take a punt or a short pass and go the distance.
