Ah, those were the days. Ask running back Thomas Jones what images Bears football conjures up for him, and the recollection sounds as clear and dear as if Jones had grown up along Lake Michigan rather than in Big Stone Gap, Va.
“I think of the uniforms, the tradition, Walter Payton, tough, hard-nosed football,” Jones said.
Like so many others, Jones vividly recalls Payton wriggling through a hole created by a rugged offensive line, snow falling in the wind at Soldier Field, and the Bears offense grinding out another first down. The image has become indelibly Chicago’s, a favorite of NFL Films and a civic treasure Bears fans protect dearly in their memories.
As a kid growing up, Jones once bought a pair of tennis shoes just because Payton endorsed them, so the chance to follow in his footsteps carrying on that tradition fulfilled a dream that never has changed. No matter how much the Bears’ offensive philosophy has.
“When you think of the Chicago Bears, you still think of power football,” Jones said. “Bears football.”
Jones readily admits that a big part of the appeal of playing for the Bears was restoring that meaning and adhering to the beliefs espoused by coach Lovie Smith on the day he took the job last January.
“We won’t abandon what makes Chicago Bear football special, the run,” Smith promised that day.
Nobody can be certain yet how close to Smith’s ideal the wide-open, Don Coryell-descendant offense installed by coordinator Terry Shea will be. Therein lies the most curious and critical aspect of a new Bears team whose former head coach lost his job mostly because of offensive ineptitude.
But it seems Smith’s statement was borne out of romanticism more than realism.
Power outage
Truth is, the run hasn’t made the Chicago Bears special for more than a decade, and the label “Bears football,” no more represents the team’s style of play of late than Atari represents contemporary video games.
It’s a cliche about Chicago as worn as deep-dish pizza and Al Capone and ignores trendier developments that have made the Bears about anything but power football lately, particularly the last decade.
Bears football since 1994 has meant one playoff victory and passing the ball 55 percent of the time, a complete reversal of the 55/45 percent run-pass ratio during 10 mostly successful seasons from 1984-93, when the team won 64 percent of its games and a Super Bowl.
“In the eight seasons I started [1983-90], we led the league in rushing four times, finished second twice and third once. That’s Bears football to me,” former offensive tackle Jim Covert said. “I remember one time we ran the ball like 15 times in a row against the Vikings, just because we could. It can demoralize a team when you can line up and move the ball between the tackles.
“There’s an intimidation factor. We were always taught by [Mike] Ditka that when we pulled on that helmet with a C and those dark jerseys, it was a privilege, not a right, to represent the city in a tough, hard-nosed way.”
Offensive plan
Shea contends the Bears will have one of the NFL’s best running games if everything comes together, a goal often lost in the emphasis on the multiplicity of the offensive scheme he brought with him from the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs were evenly balanced in Shea’s three years on the staff –53/47 percent pass-to-run–and featured one of the NFL’s leading rushers in that span in Priest Holmes.
Still, street buzz revolves around Shea’s promise to make the offense more downfield than down-your-throat.
Shea refuted the myth that the Bears’ new playbook contains so many pages that the same play is never run twice in a season but acknowledged wanting unpredictability to be as big a part of the offensive identity as being well-coached.
“That’s the design of this offense,” Shea said.
The Bears may use as many as six different formations on a given drive and shift around the line of scrimmage like fidgety toddlers in attempts to confuse the defense. It’s a thinking man’s offense more than a working man’s. They regularly will line up with only Jones in the backfield and strive to throw the ball 60 percent of the time on first down, but resist the notion that the new definition of Bears football includes the word finesse.
“Just because we’re not going to be running those power plays where you pull a guard and lead the fullback doesn’t mean we can’t run those, it just means we chose to do something else,” said offensive tackle John Tait, who saw this offense function at a high level as a member of the Chiefs.
“Who knows, when the field gets bad and you can’t run real good routes, it’s probably what we’re going to fall back on. There were a lot of times in this offense that I’ve had some history with, because of conditions, we couldn’t stick with the vertical passing game and we went to something else and we’re ready to do that.”
Different division
Bad field conditions created by typical Midwestern weather in November and December instilled the “Bears football” reputation almost as much as Payton and Roland Harper. Domes constructed in Detroit and Minnesota transformed the old “Black and Blue Division” into one that included at least two indoor teams that began building around speed instead of power.
That’s a far cry from the days when Jack Pardee, 20-22 as head coach of the Bears from 1975-77, remembers Mother Nature having a say on roster and game-plan decisions as much as any staff member. When the Bears were going against the wind at home, for example, Pardee called plays with the goal of controlling the clock for 10 of the 15 minutes in the quarter.
“You had five or six weeks after Thanksgiving and to be in the running that late, you had to have a team that would be good at home and players who could play in that,” Pardee recalled. “The frozen field, the wind, the conditions, it gave you a big advantage having a line that could run-block, a great blocking fullback and a guy like Walter. We could keep the ball away from the defense, and that was the way to win. Nowadays, an offense has to do more than just not make mistakes.”
Too one-dimensional
Pardee came to that conclusion within hours after the Dallas Cowboys and their modernized offense ran roughshod over the Bears, 37-7, in a 1977 NFC playoff game–Pardee’s last before resigning to take over at Washington. “Things were changing and I sensed we’d have to,” said Pardee, who eventually would become the face of the run-and-shoot in Houston.
But his three seasons in Chicago were part of a decade from 1974-83 in which the Bears were alarmingly one-dimensional, and they ran the football 59 percent of the time.
Ditka’s arrival after Neill Armstrong continued the run emphasis throughout the 1980s, with slightly more balance, before Dave Wannstedt and Dick Jauron traded in a Midwest tradition for the allure of the West Coast offense that became all the rage in the NFL thanks to Bill Walsh.
Now Smith and Shea come to town with their success riding on the need for the offense to redefine Bears football, though Bears veterans warn fans not to pine for familiar, local interpretations.
“The whole NFL was like the Bears were when Walter Payton was running the ball and offenses were going against a squared-up defense and nobody moved,” center Olin Kreutz said.
“Now the NFL is defenses blitzing and defensive linemen slanting and playing games on every play. You can’t really ever line up and go straight off the ball because blitzes are coming from everywhere.”
Added guard Ruben Brown, a veteran of nine NFL seasons with the Bills: “That’s pretty much old football. Now, it’s all scheme and a big chess match. They’ll pound it up the middle a few times and run outside to set you up for a reverse. No one is going in with a thin playbook anymore and running 10 plays and saying, `That’s it.’ You have to adapt to whatever the defense throws at you.”
The Bears will adapt their emphasis accordingly, whether it means passing every down or running.
The idea of Bears football will change too–by the week, the quarter, or even the series, making any emblem about the team’s style as permanent as a bumper sticker.
“I really don’t care what the image of `Bears football’ is if you win,” Kreutz said. “I don’t think anybody cares what kind of football we’re playing or what you call it, as long as we’re winning. Then you can call it anything you want.”
