Gary Fencik still remembers vividly the “moment,” the instant when it dawned on him what the 1985 Bears could be.
In the fourth quarter of a Dec. 30, 1984, playoff game, the Washington Redskins took the field at RFK Stadium with the ball on the Bears’ side of the 50 on four straight possessions. The Redskins got . . . nothing. Not even a first down.
For the first time, there was a realization.
“They couldn’t do anything,” Fencik said. “I remember thinking, `You know, we are really, really good.’ And we were kicking their [butts].”
Every so often in the life of a football team, if it is fortunate, a moment does arrive. It is more than simply a good game. It is that game, that play, that changes the mind-set of a team.
For the ’85 Bears, it happened in the ’84 playoffs. For the 2001 Bears, it happened in the first game of the season. For the 2002 Bears, it happened in a negative way. For the 2005 Bears . . .
“We believe,” safety Mike Brown said. “But you want that defining moment, and I don’t really know that we’ve had that, the `light bulb’ moment, the explosion.”
One of those moments perhaps is at hand for the Bears. Sunday they face the Detroit Lions at Ford Field, where they have played abysmally in three visits.
This is the closest the Bears have been to true thoughts of first place in the NFC North since 2001. How they respond will help define them.
It is not in players’ imaginations. Something in fact does happen at those moments when the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, when the good becomes very good and the very good becomes great.
“The whole group elevates to a new level where they now have a group they feel so connected with that they are going to try twice as hard as they ever have in their entire lives,” said Dr. Leonard Jason, professor of psychology at DePaul University and director of the Center for Community Research.
“That is something that changes the psyche. It isn’t an individual anymore. It’s a group.”
Bears coach Lovie Smith has been through such moments.
“For most teams it’s when you play well for the first time,” Smith said. “The first time you put it all together, that’s when you see what you can be when you do everything right.”
Smith was a Tampa Bay assistant in 1996 when the Buccaneers started their season 1-8, capped by a 13-10 loss in Chicago.
“But at the end of the season we won five out of seven games, and in that period of time, we crossed over,” he said. “Guys started getting it.”
The Bucs, who finished that stretch with a 34-19 humiliation of the Bears, started the next season 5-0 and began a run that took them to wild-card wins, division playoff wins and eventually a Super Bowl victory after the 2002 season.
The 2001 Bears had a season of magic, but the moment of dawning belief came not in one of the wins in that season but in a defeat. In Week 1 they were the opponents for the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, who had laid waste to the New York Giants and the defensive scoring record of the 1986 Bears.
With Shane Matthews at quarterback, the Bears had chances to win in the opening game of the Ravens’ new stadium. But Matthews threw two interceptions in the final six minutes, one in Baltimore territory, as the Bears suffered a 17-6 loss.
“But when we left that field, after a game that was a struggle, everyone knew we could be really good,” Brown said. “Even though we lost, that was one thing I remember, walking off the field and coming into the locker room and everyone saying, `We are going to be good.'”
A week later the Bears fell behind Minnesota 10-0 at halftime and methodically came back for a 17-10 win. Then came a 31-3 annihilation of the Atlanta Falcons. But it all flowed from the Baltimore game.
“They had just won the championship, so we knew we could play with the best,” linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “We won six in a row right after that.”
The 2001 Bears knew they had something special. Just how special became apparent several weeks after the Baltimore game against Jeff Garcia, Terrell Owens and the 49ers.
On San Francisco’s first possession in an overtime forced by a Bears comeback, Urlacher closed on Owens just as a Garcia pass arrived. Owens juggled the ball away. Brown caught it and ran in for a touchdown.
“The San Francisco game then was . . . wow,” Brown said.
After that, call it the Tinkerbell Effect: The Bears were playing under the spell of pixie dust.
Less than a year later, the magic vanished in a freakish unraveling against the New Orleans Saints in Champaign. A fumbled kickoff contributed to the 2-0 Bears blowing a 20-0 lead. The season, and Dick Jauron’s time in Chicago, spiraled inexorably down.
The 2005 Bears have seen the top of the mountain.
“The Detroit game felt something like that,” Smith said. “That’s when we saw what we could do when all three phases played together. But all that told us was that if we did what we were supposed to do, it was what could happen for us.”
It could happen. It hasn’t yet.
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jmullin@tribune.com
