Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football (33 page)

It’s a story told and retold by Bears fans, painted like a scene from the Passion, done in stained glass. In it, McMichael performs the same service as the Polish cop on Michigan Avenue who said, “Get your heads up. Tomorrow is another fucking day.” The chair stuck in the slate as it sticks in your mind, an image of the controlled rage of the 46.

Then Hampton jumped to his feet, screamed, and drove his hand into the film projector, which busted into gears and springs, and the men, whipped into a frenzy, charged out of the room, which is exactly how Buddy intended it.

Later, when asked if he was happy that Buddy was leaving, Ditka said, “Happy? No, I’m not happy. I’m elated.”

*   *   *

I recently watched the television broadcast of the 1986 Super Bowl. I had not seen it because I’d been at the game—you actually see a great deal less in person than on TV, which is a predicament for experience collectors. Would you rather know how it feels, or what happened? What struck me, all these years later, was the tremendous silliness of the production: the regal pomp of introductions, old heroes paraded out, officials in golden jackets, smoke machines, plastic grass, and sparkly things. It’s one of the reasons the Super Bowl is often a letdown—it’s lost in its own ribbons and wrapping. In the end, it’s still just a football game. When the announcer spoke to the crowd, he did it with a seriousness I recognized from synagogue: “The referee for today’s game, Red Cashion, will now conduct the coin toss ceremony.”

The camera sweeps across the crowd: more than seventy thousand people crammed to the rafters of the Superdome. I lean in as the shot lingers on some Bears fans: several wear McMahon jerseys; a few sport full-on movie-quality bear heads. A few years ago, a small plane, carrying two Packers fans home from Soldier Field, crashed. The pilot, who had removed his regalia, was killed instantly, but the passenger, still wearing his cheesehead, was uninjured. I remember where I was sitting that day, the section and the yard line, and am hoping to catch a glimpse of my seventeen-year-old self.

Payton was sent out to represent the Bears in the coin toss. Number 34. In his white jersey. With his headband and Jheri curl. Was he nervous? Sometimes, you get what you want but it comes too late; better if it happens when you are young, before you realized how important it would be. Payton won the toss, and elected to receive. In many ways, the kickoff is the best moment of any football game: the instant after the kicker has made contact and the ball hangs as if frozen and the players race toward collision and the fans hold their breath and it seems as if anything is possible.

The first play was a handoff to Sweetness: he ran seven yards. The second play went to Payton, too. He fumbled. New England recovered. A groan went up from those seats where the fans were dressed like Kodiaks. It was the old ache, the jinx, the disease. “Goddamn it all to hell,” said a man behind me, “it’s going to be the same story all over again.” The Patriots kicked a field goal: 3–0. It was the last competitive moment of the day. As soon as the Bears defense got on, they began to terrorize Tony Eason. He’d been a star at the University of Illinois, six four, 212 pounds, a cannon for an arm. The Patriots had taken him first in the 1983 draft. He was at the start of a seemingly long career. But the Bears had him spooked. “His eyes were bugging out,” said Dave Duerson. “He was terrified, really, every snap he was on the field. We were way inside his head.”

For a quarterback, playing against the 46 was like surfing: if you didn’t want to look like a fool, you had to get beyond the break, into the calm water. But Eason spent the entire afternoon close to shore, dashing here and there as the rollers broke over his head. The worse it got, the tighter he played; the tighter he played, the worse it got. He was chased, knocked down, sacked, intercepted. A nightmare, a humiliation watched by 127 million people. It was the culmination of Buddy in that room with the number 46 circled on the board. By the end of the first quarter, Eason had come to resemble the chicken on the hot plate: his feet were moving, but that didn’t mean he was dancing. “I was adept at reading the offensive linemen,” McMichael said later. “By their stance, you know if it’s going to be run or pass. How do you know? If they’re rocked back like they’re taking a shit in the woods, it’s going to be a pass. Once you’ve seen that, you look at the quarterback, look at his eyes to see if he’s looking downfield, trying to read the coverage. But when I looked at Eason—and this was from the start, right after Payton fumbled and they scored that field goal—his eyes were wide open and empty.”

Tony Eason is the only starting quarterback in Super Bowl history to finish the day without a single completion. He would finish zero for six, with three sacks and a fumble. ESPN rated his performance the worst in Super Bowl history. When the Patriots offense came on the field late in the second quarter, Eason stayed on the bench. He was replaced by the veteran Steve Grogan, who had not played in two months. Eason watched from the sideline, helmet off, confused. He was Sonny Liston refusing to come out for the seventh against Cassius Clay. He was Roberto Duran waving his gloves, saying,
No mas.
He was the old can of quarterback, tossed in the bin. He later claimed he’d had the flu, but I knew a kid at Tulane who played catch with him on the quad a day before the game. This kid talked about Eason’s perfect spirals, the way the ball exploded from his hand. “Flu? Bullshit. He looked great.”

If he did have the flu, it was in the way that Giants running back Joe Morris had a migraine in the middle of the first playoff game: a 46 migraine; a 46 flu. “Hell, what’s the boy gonna do?” Otis Wilson said sympathetically. “The Patriots ain’t blocking, and he’s got these big monsters coming down on him like mad hammers. Shit, give the ball to Grogan and let the old man take the beating.”

Eason continued in the NFL for several more seasons, but he was never really the same. He’d been broken by the Bears. I tried and failed to track him down. At last reporting, ten years ago, he was coaching basketball in Sacramento. He’s otherwise dropped off the grid. A few years ago, at Super Bowl time, an ESPN reporter, having gotten ahold of Eason’s home number, was brushed off by whoever answered. “Tony doesn’t like to speak with anyone in the media,” the reporter was told, “especially this time of year.” When the reporter contacted the University of Illinois and asked if they knew the whereabouts of their former star, he was told, “Good question. We have no idea.” Twenty-five years have gone by and Tony Eason is still running from Richard Dent. Like Joe Ferguson, he knows why you’re calling and he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Meanwhile, the Bears were scoring. McMahon ran for a touchdown, then ran for another; the Fridge scored, ditto Suhey. McMahon completed twelve passes for 256 yards. He went off the rails with the headbands, though, coming out with a new one each series: this one to shine a light on juvenile diabetes, that one to remind people of the POWs still in Vietnam, this one a shout-out to his friend
PLUTO
. It was 23–3 at halftime. The only question was Payton: Would he score, or had he waited all these years to come away with nothing? The potential embarrassment—for Payton, who took these things too seriously—was sharpened by the fact that the Bears kept scoring. Even the scrubs were getting touchdowns. Fans would later point to a specific play as the lost opportunity, the moment Sweetness should’ve scored. The Bears had the ball on the New England 1-yard line: Payton lined up in the backfield beside Fridge, who everyone assumed would be the blocker and lead the way in. McMahon faked to Walter but gave the ball to Perry, who bulled his way across. “Walter Payton, I guess they figure they got a whole quarter to go,” said the announcer, Dick Enberg. This play call was said to show Mike Ditka at his worst: by going with the novelty instead of the runner who’d carried the team for years, he was serving only his own legend.

The linebackers—Wilber Marshall (58), Mike Singletary (50), and Otis Wilson (55)—in the afterglow of their biggest win

Late in the fourth quarter, the Bears pulled their starters, including Payton. He sat alone on the bench, helmet off, sad face gleaming. The final score was 46–10. It was the most lopsided contest in Super Bowl history to that point. The Patriots gained just seven yards on the ground. “I’m not embarrassed,” Patriots guard Ron Wooten said. “I’m humiliated.” When the game ended, several players hoisted Ditka on their shoulders and several others hoisted Ryan. The coaches were carried off side by side, each borne away to his own destiny.

*   *   *

Payton headed straight for the tunnel. He went through the locker room like a shot, past the tubs filled with champagne, past the commemorative T-shirts, past the TV boys setting up for interviews, past Bob Costas loitering among the cables and gaffer’s tape. Payton threw his helmet into the lockers—
bang!
—went into a utility closet, locked the door, fell to his knees, and wept. A handful of people gathered outside—Payton’s agent, the team’s PR chief. They begged him to come out. Walter moaned. When told his contract required him to give interviews, he shouted, “I ain’t no damned monkey on a string.”

“He was livid at Ditka for ignoring him and livid at Perry and McMahon for hogging the spotlight and livid at himself for fumbling,” Jeff Pearlman wrote in
Sweetness
.

At first, Ditka was confused—
I mean, hey, we just won the goddamn Super Bowl!
—but he eventually came to understand Payton’s anger. “Here’s a guy who set the all-time rushing record—one of the great players in the history of the game, or
the
greatest in my opinion—and to be on that big a stage in that short a time and not be able to do what he did best, I understood it. In the beginning, I didn’t, because I had scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl and it meant nothing to me, it was just a touchdown … and then I could understand it because I was just a guy, but he was
the
guy.”

“That was probably the most disturbing thing in my career,” Ditka said in
Never Die Easy: The Autobiography of Walter Payton
. “If I had one thing to do over again, I would make sure that he took the ball into the end zone. I loved him; I had great respect for him. The only thing that really ever hurt me was when he didn’t score in the Super Bowl, that killed me when I found out about it. I didn’t think about it, I really didn’t realize it. It just never crossed my mind, to be honest with you, that it was important. And then I realized how important it really was and I felt so bad about that over the years, but I couldn’t undo it. In my mind, even when we were ahead 40-something to 10, or 30-something to 10, the only thing I kept looking at, and the only thing I kept thinking about, was winning the football game.”

“He played for so long and had been the Chicago Bears for so many years and to see him not get into the end zone, it had to hurt,” said McMahon. “But I don’t think anyone recognized it during the game. I know I didn’t. One of the touchdowns I scored was a play designed for Walter, but I spotted a hole and went in.”

I’m with the Buddhists on this one: it does not matter who scored the points, only that the points were scored. The fact is, the Patriots’ plan was built around stopping Payton. In such an instance, no matter what Ditka said later, the wise course was to use the star as a decoy, fake the pitch to Sweetness but give the rock to Fridge. Yes, Payton wanted to score. And Butkus and Sayers wanted to play for a championship. And Luckman wanted to quarterback in the era of big money. And Grange did not want to rip up his knee. And Halas wanted to live long enough to see the Bears win a Super Bowl. In fact, Halas did not want to die at all. “Here’s where I will defend Ditka,” said Bob Avellini. “You win the Super Bowl and Walter walks off like he just lost his dog! It’s a team game. If you win, that’s all that matters.”

“If you go to the Super Bowl, the idea is to win,” Johnny Roland told me. “And we won 46 to 10. So my explanation to Walter was, ‘When I came here in ’83, despite all his individual accomplishments, he was still a loser ’cause the Bears never won. And you’re only identified as a winner when you win. And the idea that the Gale Sayerses of the world, the Dick Butkuses, all the great players that have gone through this league—O. J. Simpson never got a sniff at a Super Bowl. Not only did Walter get a sniff, we won going away. And it’s not like we didn’t call plays for him. The first touchdown McMahon scored was an option. If you’re a defensive coordinator, who are you going to take away, McMahon or Payton? So they take Payton, and McMahon scores. All those years he wanted to be in the Super Bowl, and obviously as a running back you want to score, but if it ain’t to be, it ain’t to be. And you feel bad but it ain’t the end of the world. The end of the world is you go to the Super Bowl and you lose and nobody remembers you.”

“Walter was always the focal point prior to Ditka and McMahon getting there,” Kurt Becker told me. “Then, when Ditka took over, other people emerged: Otis Wilson and Hampton. And so now Walter had to share. I think that’s what bothered him. The thing about it is … we wanted to win … and giving Walter the ball every play, you just couldn’t win.”