Writing about the Bears can be difficult, because of the thick media veneer that covers the entire organization, from the lowest defensive back to Mike Ditka and on up through the ownership. They are, after all, the Bears, and this is–as painful as it is to admit–a Bears town. While the Cubs and White Sox and Bulls and Blackhawks are worshiped in (progressively diminishing) circles, they remain human beings. But there is something about the Bears that makes them not exactly larger than life, not exactly phony, but superreal. Perhaps it’s the gladiatorlike game they play, perhaps it’s the candy-ass treatment they receive in the media (especially television), but the Bears always seem to walk a little taller, talk a little bolder, and act a little more as a man should act than any of us normal people do. It’s the same sort of treatment John Wayne received from John Ford–a sort of instant mythification–and it’s best seen when it’s taken away–as when Willie Gault and Doug Flutie became suddenly human after being traded, or when William Perry and Jim McMahon were brought low this year.
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This line of thinking first raised its ugly head with this painful realization: great as the Bears have been this decade and as well as individual players have performed–with a few clearly destined for the Hall of Fame–this is nevertheless not a great Bears team. The great Bears of the early 30s won championships in 1932 and 1933 and then went undefeated in 1934 before losing to the New York Giants in one of the most famous of the pre-Super Bowl title games, the one in which the Bears led at the half before the Giants switched to tennis shoes and scored 27 second-half points to win on an icy field. The great Bears of the early 40s–the Monsters of the Midway–peaked at the end of an eight-and-three 1940 season to whip the Washington Redskins 73-0, then repeated in 1941, and then went undefeated in 1942 before losing the title game shortly after George Halas entered the Navy. No doubt the Bears of the 80s, with their added speed and strength, would thrash these teams soundly if placed on the same field, but the fact remains that they did not dominate their era as previous Bears teams had. They didn’t get the job done. In a cursory glance through the Bears’ history, we do not see anyplace else where the Bears lost three out of four home play-off games; we don’t even see anyplace else where they lost back-to-back home play-off games.
One impression we’d got while watching the live broadcast the previous Sunday was that Jim McMahon had had a bad day, and surely his poor statistics don’t lie. Yet it should also be remembered–as was obvious on a second and more even-tempered viewing–that he had a number of passes dropped. His arm also appeared to be in good shape. If he was rusty from inaction–which he himself denied–the manifestation was that his passes lacked their usual touch. They zinged on a beeline to the receiver and–more than once–right through or off of his hands.
Rice and the Niners’ other wide receiver were lined up on the same side of the field, with Rice on the outside about a yard behind the line of scrimmage. The Bears lined Vestee Jackson up opposite Rice, with Richardson covering the other man. Rice, however, went in motion, crossing behind his teammate, back toward the center of the field. The Bears were in a zone defense, not a man-to-man, and they tipped this off when Jackson and Richardson switched men instead of crossing over, with Richardson now guarding Rice and Jackson taking the other receiver. Rice hopped around Richardson’s inept bump-and-run, went downfield, and cut outside to an utterly vacant area of the Bears’ zone defense. What this shows–besides the fact that the Niners had a weapon, the Bears knew they had a weapon, and yet the Niners managed to use their weapon anyway–was that Niners coach Bill Walsh had noticed predictable tendencies on the part of the Bears’ defense, and he exploited those tendencies.
