DA BEARS

Great article by Michael Wilbon below. When we lived in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Bears vs Patriots was the first Super Bowl I ever saw.

Between These Bears and Those Bears, There's No Denying There's No Comparison By Michael Wilbon Thursday, February 1, 2007; E10

MIAMI -- To most of the pro football world, the 1985 Chicago Bears are a museum piece, one of the great and fascinating Super Bowl teams, but a one-hit wonder and certainly not as important to the game as the multiple champions in San Francisco, Washington and Dallas. But in Chicago, the '85 Bears are a living, ghostlike being, the most beloved team and the greatest source of civic pride in the city's history, much bigger than even Michael Jordan's Bulls. Kids who weren't even born on Jan. 26, 1986, when the '85 Bears won the franchise's only Super Bowl, know far too much about Ditka and Sweetness, Refrigerator Perry and the Punky QB, Buddy Ryan and his quarterback-mangling "46" defense. And because not a day goes by without them being not just mentioned, but held up as evidence of the city's toughness, the 2007 Bears can't escape the comparison. A year ago, when this group of Bears made the playoffs and emerged as, potentially, Chicago's second Super Bowl team, most of the players were stunned by how often they were compared with the '85 team and quite a few clearly resented questions from reporters and people on the street. But having had a full year to understand how and why that team consumes Chicago, there's no more eye-rolling when the subject is broached. It's as often talked about as the wind-chill. "A guy asked me the other day if a win here in Miami would mean we could turn the page on the '85 Bears," tight end Desmond Clark said this week. "And I told him we cannot turn the page on the '85 Bears. Not ever. We can add to the history by writing our own chapter, but there's always going to be that question in Chicago: 'How would you guys stack up with the '85 Bears?' "
Once upon a time, like last year, it seemed the question annoyed the team's most decorated and admired player, linebacker Brian Urlacher. If it did, it doesn't now. Asked how the two squads compare, Urlacher said: "There's no comparison. One, they won a championship and we haven't. Two, look at the numbers. They're everything people say they were and more. They took the ball away, they sacked quarterbacks, they blitzed. And when they weren't blitzing, the offense thought they were. They were physical, smart. They were everything." They were even things very un-NFL, which is another reason people won't let go, from the midseason recording of "Super Bowl Shuffle" to the way Mike Ditka and Ryan feuded openly, to William "The Refrigerator" Perry's blasts into the end zone. One day during the '85 season at the Bears' headquarters, Ditka stuck his head into the press room as he was about to climb into a limousine to go tape his weekly television show. Ditka asked if anyone would like a ride and a little champagne. It wasn't yet 7 p.m., so the writers thanked him and reminded him they were on deadline. "You guys don't know how to live," he said.
The modern Bears play football and that's about it. It's a team loaded with smart and conversational players who simply color inside the lines. There are some similarities in structure. Both were led by great defenses that were anchored by great middle linebackers, Mike Singletary then and Urlacher now. The strength of both offenses was the running game, the incomparable Walter Payton and Matt Suhey back then, Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson now. Jim McMahon, the best quarterback the team has had since the 1940s, had modest statistical input but was the soul of the team. Rex Grossman, while 15-3 this season, could sparkle in victory Sunday against the Colts and still not measure up to the rebellious McMahon. The '85 Bears had a prolific young kicker in Kevin Butler, as do these Bears in Robbie Gould. Devin Hester, blindingly fast as he is, couldn't be any faster than Willie Gault, the track star from Tennessee. Whatever these Bears have, it seems like the '85 Bears could trump them, except for Urlacher, whom even old-school Chicagoans have embraced as a worthy successor to Bill George, Dick Butkus and Singletary.
Lovie Smith's Bears could win a championship Sunday and still not be viewed as legendary. The history of the NFL simply cannot be written without studying Ditka's Bears, if for no other reason than they redefined defensive dominance and changed the way the modern offense operated. As Joe Theismann said in a conversation earlier in the week, using three and four receivers to spread the field became the primary way to counter the "46" defense. "Their whole defensive concept," said Theismann, who played for the Redskins against those Bears both in the 1984 playoffs and in the '85 regular season, "was built on speed and aggression. They made you speed up things so much you rushed through the things you were trying to do as an offense. Everybody was afraid to go to three wide because of the pressure they put on you, when in fact it would have been the best way to play against the '85 Bears defense."
Instead, offenses would employ two tight ends, which would leave them with one fewer receiver and still unable to block the line of Richard Dent, Steve McMichael, Fridge, Dan Hampton, the linebacking unit of Singletary, Wilber Marshall, Otis Wilson, and the blitz-crazed safeties, Dave Duerson and Gary Fencik. It seemed at the time like only the cornerbacks, Mike Richardson and Leslie Frazier, covered anybody and everybody else met at the quarterback. "The whole thing," Theismann said, "was designed to confuse the blocking scheme." And it worked like no other defense ever for that one season and the next, until McMahon got hurt and the Redskins ended the Bears' run in a playoff game in Chicago. And while the city moved on and reveled in Jordan's Bulls, it has continued to look for an NFL championship team, a bullying, nasty, defense-first, quarterback-eating team.
Clark, who will play tight end Sunday, said he purchased a DVD history of the '85 team and has been watching it every night. "You have to embrace history," he said, "even if you're in the position of being compared to it." Defensive end Alex Brown was at least a little skeptical when he arrived in Chicago a few years ago and kept hearing about those Bears. So he sat down and watched tape of entire games. "Being compared to that team is something I understand now," Brown said. "It's the only Super Bowl team Chicago has, and it was a special team, special to the point that 21 years later it's still celebrated. So you know they must have been special. You get compared to that, it's hard."