How bounties ruined the Chicago Bears

All this talk of bounties in the NFL has me reminiscing back to the mid-80s and the reason why I hate the Green Bay Packers more than any other team in professional sports. Specifically, November 23, 1986. The Bears were following up their Super Bowl season with another stellar campaign. They were dominating the league once again and had Chicago fans talking dynasty. After years of sports futility in Chicago, we finally had a team that was the class of the league. The 1986 Bears would go 14-2 before a bitter defeat to the Washington Redskins at home in their first playoff game. But they weren’t the same team as their Super Bowl season the year before because quarterback Jim McMahon was knocked out for the season with a separated shoulder in week twelve .

What I remember most about that game was the Packers’ defensive lineman Charles Martin getting to McMahon just after he threw an interception, lifting him up into the air, pausing, and then–in a move that would impress any WWF thug–driving him into the hard-as-rock Soldier Field Astroturf. It wasn’t a hit; it was a “hit.” As in a premeditated crime. You see, the Packers (on their way to a 4-12 season) decided that if they couldn’t win, they’d cause as much bodily damage as they could. Their coach, Forrest Gregg, hated the Bears from his playing days in the 1960s. So, they had bounties out on several Bears players. How do I know this? Because rocket-scientist Charles Martin couldn’t remember who they were so he wore them on his uniform.

That picture says it all. McMahon crumpled on the Astroturf. A penalty flag rests on his head. Martin with a “who me?” look on his face. The list of numbers hanging from his belt, with #9 at the very top.

We didn’t know it yet, but this was really the beginning of the end of the Ditka-inspired Chicago Bears. Free agency began the next year, taking LB Wilbur Marshall away with no compensation. McMahon was never really able to stay healthy again. (To this day, he is plagued by dementia, but not necessarily because of that hit–he took plenty of them.) It started a twenty-five-year revolving door of quarterbacks that included Steve Fuller, Doug Flutie, Mike Tomczak, Will Furrer, Peter Tom Willis, Jim Harbaugh, Steve Walsh, Dave Krieg, Rick Mirer, Moses Moreno, Steve Stenstrom, Erik Kramer, Cade McNown… I need to stop. Defensive Coordinator (and inventor of the 46-defense) Buddy Ryan had already left to coach the Eagles. With no other offensive weapons, teams targeted Walter Payton. Then, to add insult to injury, Steve McMichael and Jim McMahon eventually suited up with the heads of cheese. Why not just rip out our hearts and stomp them into the ground?

Yeah, I just threw up in my mouth a bit.

In 1986, I was a young man of 24, in my prime fanhood. At the time, it was hard to believe that something as dominant as the 1985 Chicago Bears would turn out to be a one-hit-wonder. They never even had their moment in the White House as Super Bowl Champs. The day they were to go was the day of the Challenger explosion. As if that wasn’t a metaphor for something. So, it was cancelled and never rescheduled. In fact, the 1985 Bears didn’t go to the White House for their “official” visit until this past Fall. And that was probably only due to there being a Bears fan in the Oval Office. Eventually, our sporting sorrows were finally soothed with the arrival of a skinny, young kid named Jordan. But that wouldn’t pay off until the 90s.

So, the Saints are about to get the book thrown at them for having bounties on opposing players. It looks like it might cost them as much as a half-season of suspensions for players, their head coach, and GM. It could cost them draft picks. Other players are wondering what the big deal is, and saying that bounties are common all over the NFL. Well, it wasn’t common on the ’85 Bears. Mike Singletary and Dan Hampton didn’t need bounties. They just destroyed everybody on all the other teams equally. But all it took was a 4-12 team with a “hit list” to nip that dynasty in the bud. I hope they suspend players and coaches for multiple games. I’m going to pretend that, somehow, this is payback for 1986.