Mike Ditka has outlasted George Halas as coach of the Bears. Halas never coached more than 10 seasons in a row. He had four 10-year stretches but never stuck around for an 11th straight season.
Ditka is beginning his 11th, raising the inevitable question: Has he stuck around too long?
He has outlasted his flagship restaurant and admits: ”My popularity has diminished.” Why? ”Because we live in a society where they want you to fail after you succeed.”
It has been seven years since Ditka took the Bears to the Super Bowl. No coach has returned to a Super Bowl after that long an absence. Has Chicago seen the best of the Ditka Era?
”Some people think they would have seen the best of it if I wouldn`t have come,” Ditka quipped.
Strained relationships with players and promises of change after an embarrassing nosedive last season already have turned 1992 into Ditka`s biggest challenge since his 1982 arrival. Predictably, he feels rejuvenated.
”My enthusiasm is the best it`s been in 10 years,” he said, ”because I think we`re a much better football team than we ended up last year.”
Doubt Ditka and he loves it. This is a man who thrives on confrontation. The enemy can be management, his own players, rival coaches, his own assistant coaches, the Detroit Lions or the media. If success is measured by the number of pots Ditka has boiling at one time, 1992 could be a banner year. These are among Ditka`s promises, threats, observations and predictions made the week before training camp:
– William Perry will be gone.
– Ditka`s cold war with Neal Anderson continues.
– Richard Dent did not follow through on off-season workout promises.
– Management had better sign Wendell Davis quickly.
– Ditka let team discipline go to pot.
– New conditioning coach Russ Riederer has made a big impact.
– The team ”choked” in losses to San Francisco and Dallas to end last season.
– The NFL schedule-maker who allowed the Bears to open the season against new NFC Central Division champion Detroit in Soldier Field is ”a genius.”
A book on Ditka due out in August purportedly will portray him as the 800-pound gorilla whose act has grown tiresome for players. Whether it will tarnish his image or merely enhance it offers fodder for another sideshow in a season already ripe with possibilities for controversy.
”The book is going to be based on me getting whatever I want my way,”
Ditka said. ”And I`ll tell you what: I can sit here and tell you most of the things I want I do get, but I work for them. They were out taking pictures of my fence in front of my home, saying I went against the village to put up a fence.
”I hope it affects our team just like (”The Jordan Rules”) affected the Bulls.”
Neal Anderson didn`t write the book, but he might consider penning a sequel. The star running back limped into Ditka`s doghouse last season after Ditka allowed Anderson to determine his own physical condition. Although their frequent misunderstandings were supposed to be resolved, Ditka now thinks otherwise.
”With Anderson, the relationship is strained because he strained it, and it`ll stay strained probably,” Ditka said. ”He`ll do his job, and I`ll do my job. There`ll be no interrelationship there at all. None. Not on my part. There`ll be no effort to make one, and we`ll just see how it goes.”
Ditka agrees such a rift will not be healthy for his team.
”But I don`t think it`ll hurt, either, because our success isn`t totally about Mike Ditka or Neal Anderson,” Ditka said. ”It`s a team. He has a job to do. He gets paid a lot of money to do his job. He didn`t do his job very well last year, either. If you`re hurt, you`re hurt. Don`t play. But don`t tell me you`re capable of playing and then play subpar, which he did.”
Ditka said he won`t repeat the mistake of allowing Anderson to decide.
”If he`s performing at the level he was last year, he won`t start for us. It`s that simple,” he said. ”You say I can`t do that? Believe me, I`ll do it. No question in my mind I should have last year. Go back and look at the film. I don`t care if that bothers Neal Anderson or not. If his feelings are hurt, fine.”
If Anderson needs a co-author, Perry may have plenty of time on his hands soon.
”I don`t think he`ll be with this football team this year,” Ditka said of the corpulent defensive tackle. ”He`s not coming in until we sign him, and we`re not signing him until we weigh him and give him a physical. So if that impasse happens, and if this court case (NFL antitrust case) says free agency, he`ll be with somebody else. I told the coaches after he reneged on everything he said he would do to not even count on him. If he`s there, it`s a bonus.”
Ditka maintains there are two differences between this year`s threats to Perry and the threats of yesteryears. One is Ditka has viable alternatives in Chris Zorich, Alonzo Spellman and others. The other is Reiderer`s arrival and a commitment to write down rules.
”Where I backed off,” Ditka said, ”is I never set the rules totally. I said, `Here`s what we`re going to do.` The rules are written down now. I can`t renege on the rules. The letter already has gone out to them. They know they have to pass that shuttle test (300-yard sprints in sets of 50-50, 50-50, 50-50). Anybody who doesn`t pass it before camp will take the test after the afternoon practice every day until they pass it. Anybody who`s foolish enough to try to risk that is going to die.”
Ditka said Dent reneged on a promise to show up more at Halas Hall and get into better shape than he was last year, when Ditka got into a sideline shouting match and criticized his weight.
”I`m tired of it, and I really don`t give a darn about the guys who weren`t here (in the off-season). But I do care about the guys who broke their tails out there,” Ditka said.
Talent won`t be enough to earn a job, he warned.
”The key word in this whole thing is discipline. We`re going back to the way things were done when we came in. They`re going to eat every meal (at training camp). If they don`t, they`ll be fined. They`re going to weigh in twice a week, or they`re going to be fined for every pound they`re over. I haven`t fined anybody around here for three years of any consequence.”
Was that a mistake?
”No question. Here`s where my thinking went: These are men. And I would assume somewhere along the line that football would be important to them. I really didn`t want to let the side issues like Perry`s weight become more important than the main issue. Now, I agree it should be more important, because he isn`t going to play unless the weight`s down.
”That was a disgrace last year, and when I see the films, I`m ticked off more at myself than anything else for letting him go on the field. And I don`t care that he played good at times. He also played terrible at times.”
Ditka reported Perry weighed 390 by late last season and fooled the coach by wearing bigger practice pants than game pants. Yet Ditka can`t resist a kind word for the flabby ”Fridge,” a pet since his rookie season of 1985.
”I still like him,” Ditka said. ”I`d be tickled to death if he walked in here and jumped on a scale and weighed 320 or 315 pounds.”
When Ditka labeled his team ”overachievers” following the playoff loss to Dallas, it offended personnel director Bill Tobin. During the off-season, Ditka had a hip replacement operation without informing the Bears` front office, which had to scramble to answer questions from the media. It was indicative of Ditka`s penchant for going his own way, something that never has adversely affected team production in the past.
Convinced that last year`s contract squabbles resulted in injuries to every late-signer except quarterback Jim Harbaugh, Ditka is adamant about speeding up negotiations for Davis, the wide receiver who overcame a history of injury to blossom last season.
”We need Wendell Davis,” Ditka said. ”He`s an ideal player for us. He`s not a Jerry Rice, because we don`t feature people that way, but playing in that kind of offense he could be pretty spectacular. I`m trying to tell these people, `I want Wendell in camp on Day 1.` He`s been out here every day working. He`s been an ideal example of what a Bear should be. Doesn`t say a word, just does his job and works out.”
The losses to San Francisco and Dallas last year represented the most troublesome foldup in a series of swoons. In Ditka`s last five years, the Bears have won 83 percent of their games in September and only 36 percent after December 1, including playoffs. The trend will make it difficult for the Bears to generate city enthusiasm until they show skeptics what they can do for them late. The Bulls will be well into another season before fans pay much serious attention to the Bears.
”We ended up getting knocked out of it by just playing like crap,”
Ditka said. ”We choked against San Francisco, and we choked against Dallas, in my opinion. We did not play Bear football. We did not challenge people, did not get in their face. At the end of last year, we were not a very good football team physically and mentally.
”I don`t know why that is. That`s what we`re trying to overcome this year, and that`s part of why I`ve tried to put this off-season program together, to figure out how we can start so good and end so bad all the time.”
Ditka`s downtown restaurant closed, he said, because it couldn`t meet the debt service despite ”doing good business. We needed an infusion of capital. We actually had the people to come in and continue. Then the bank made some demands and the landlord made a demand and we said, `Who needs it?` ”
He said he is up to his waist in alligators with the Ditka`s restaurant near O`Hare but is committed to making it work because of the people who depend on it for a living.
”Popularity? What is it? An accident,” Ditka said. ”I`ve never deceived anybody. I`ve never put a product on the field people weren`t proud of. A lot of people may disagree with my commercial endorsements. To heck with them. This is America. I`m sorry. That`s a freedom.”
Financially, Ditka is secure for life ”unless I keep running these restaurants.
”I was the happiest guy in the world in Dallas when I had nothing. I could go back to having nothing and be happy. I don`t have to belong to nine country clubs. This is a residue of success. Is it important residue? I`m not sure, but I enjoy the life. I enjoy the people I know. I`m not worried.”
Two years to go on his contract, and the Ditka Era doesn`t sound ready for curtain calls.
”A guy asked me, `Do you have anymore goals?` I said, `Do I have anymore goals? I would die tomorrow if I didn`t have anymore goals. Success is not a destination; it`s a journey. You go, go, go, go. The thing that is exciting about this year is there`s a new challenge. There`s a team up in Detroit that is now the Central Division champion. The guy who made the schedule is a genius. Because one of those teams isn`t going to come off the field in very good shape. Them or us. That`s the way it`s got to be. Got to be a bloodbath. Somebody`s got to kill somebody out there. Got to be that way.”
Ditka did not know that he will have coached the Bears for a longer stretch than Halas did. Ditka already has coached in Chicago one year longer than Vince Lombardi coached in Green Bay.
”Isn`t that something?” Ditka said, more amused than impressed. ”I don`t know that there`s any significance that will be marked out in history or leave an imprint on society. Let me tell you something: The Bears lost Nagurski; they survived. They lost Red Grange; they survived. They lost Halas; they survived. They lost Butkus; they survived. They lost Sayers; they survived. They lost Payton; they survived. They lose Ditka; they`ll survive.”
