The Bears’ Central Division dynasty has ended. Their hopes of dominating the National Football League, or even just the National Football Conference, for several years, for a football generation, never came to pass. Instead, the Bears settled for control over their little fiefdom, taxing their neighboring teams but failing to extend their regional boundaries, and now even that small-scale dynasty is history.
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There were moments last Sunday when the Bears actually appeared to be reapproaching respectability. In a game between what we believed were two well-matched football squads, destined to go to the team more emotionally ready for play, the Bears scored first. Richard Dent stripped Herschel Walker of the football in a lackadaisical manner toward the end of a play on the Vikings’ first possession. It was done with almost animal ease: Dent pursued Walker on an end run, swiped at him from behind, jarring the ball loose, and then let his momentum carry him out of the play, like a real-life bear that has just run down some small animal and delivered the single telling blow, so that it knows it can stop, turn around, and go back and pick up the spoils anytime it pleases. The ball bounced loose on the turf behind Dent as he coasted to a stop. William Perry scooped it up and advanced it some short yardage before having his feet cut out from under him. Dent turned around in time to see this and raise his arms. The offense, however, did not do much with the ball. On third down and short yardage, the Vikings’ Chris Doleman shot past our quickly aging tackle Jimbo Covert to stop Neal Anderson shy of the necessary yardage. Yet Kevin Butler came on to kick his record 24th straight field goal and the Bears were out in front 3-0, quieting the fans in Minnesota’s Metrodome, a castle once made sport of by the Bears’ coach Mike Ditka, but now too much feared to be laughed at.
The Bears’ record has gotten a little worse each week without Hampton. They opened 4-0–the salad days of their season–but that fourth game brought with it the loss of Hampton to yet another knee injury. Since that time, the Bears have won twice and lost seven times. At first we couldn’t believe that the loss of a single player could have such an impact, and to be sure the Bears’ advanced age has had something to do with this utter collapse; they look a little older each week, especially the offensive line. Yet the loss of Hampton crippled the defense, causing a chain reaction, a domino effect. Where the Bears in the past had the talent to get over an injury or two, this year’s defense was a finely tuned unit with a balance that was teetering on the brink from the very beginning. Hampton’s loss effectively rid the Bears of a pass rush, as rookie defensive end Trace Armstrong was slow to develop; as Hampton’s replacement, Perry, is ineffective when it comes to huffing and puffing after the quarterback; and as Steve McMichael became merely human without Hampton to play with, deprived as he was of his trademark pass-rush stunts and with the other team occasionally putting a double team on him, when they had always had to spend the extra lineman on Hampton before. Without a pass rush, the opposing quarterback suddenly had time to work on the rookie cornerback Woolford. Running backs had time to circle the turbulence at the line of scrimmage and get in the clear, making Mike Singletary seem seasons older. Worrying about the pass, the defense suddenly became susceptible to the run. It’s been a lesson as instructive in its own football way as It’s a Wonderful Life: the loss of one man does make a difference in the absence of what he does to maintain the social balance.
Tomczak went sour. It was typical of a team on the descent that his one heroic afternoon this year was wasted by the defense in the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, while on all other occasions Tomczak sabotaged the defense with his own poor play under pressure. The Boomer got the clicker and began to stray, at first during commercials, then between plays, coming across an old Madonna video clip, “Like a Virgin,” on MTV. We held onto Madonna as if she were some sign of better days, of the glory of the 80s, of the Bears’ championship, of their tremendous teams led by the departed and the decayed, of Jim McMahon and Willie Gault, Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall, Singletary and Hampton, Covert and Jay Hilgenberg. The 80s, they’re over. They’re history. Madonna will fare better than the Bears in the 90s.
