This is the first mention of the Chicago Bears in the Tribune–Jan. 29, 1922. The Tribune also was crowing about getting the Packers in trouble.
FOOTBALL PROS SHOW
GREEN BAY THE DOOR;
TRIBUNE STORY CAUSE
CANTON, O., Jan. 28–[Special.]–Magnates of the American Professional Football association, in session here today, ousted the Green Bay (Wis.) Packers club from membership, because the Packers last fall used players still in college, thereby violating the rules of the association.
A rule was adopted providing for a deposit of $1,000 by each club to guarantee observation of this rule. No agreement was reached on a standard salary. A player limit of eighteen was also adopted.
George Halas, with Decatur Staleys last fall, was granted a franchise for the Chicago Bears, to operate at Cubs park. . . .
The foregoing message was sent to The Tribune by Joe F. Carr, veteran sports promoter of Columbus, O., and manager of the Columbus Panhandles, who was re-elected president of the pro league. The action of the American Professional Football association was the direct result of an expose by The Tribune of conditions prevailing on the Green Bay team.
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Here is an account of Red Grange’s first game with the Bears, as reported by the Tribune’s Irving Vaughn on Nov. 27, 1925:
36,000 SEE CARDS TIE BEARS,
0 TO 0; GRANGE GAINS 92 YARDS FOR HIS PRO DEBUT
Red Grange as a Bear is much the same as Red, the roving Illini.
He swung his star into the salaried firmament for the first time yesterday at the Cub park and it blinked, not sensationally but steadily, in a hard driving but thrilling game that terminated with the Bears and Cardinals in possession of a 0 to 0 score, and with a packed house of 36,000 convinced that dollars as well as college loyalty will make gridmen fight.
And because twenty-two fellows, Grange among them, fought and played smart football, neither goal was threatened except for an attempted drop kick that the illustrious Paddy Driscoll, the Grange of the south side, sent spinning into the enemy domain only to have it carom off the outside of one of the uprights.
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There’s Bear weather, and there’s unbearable weather. The Bears won the 1932 world championship indoors, at the old Chicago Stadium, when cold weather prohibited the use of Wrigley Field. Wilfrid Smith reported on Dec. 19, 1932:
BEARS WIN, 9-0;
PRO FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS
The professional football championship of the United States is the property of the Chicago Bears. They won that title last night at the Chicago Stadium by defeating the Spartans of Portsmouth, O., 9 to 0, before a near capacity crowd of 11,198. Officials announced that the gross receipts were in excess of $15,000.
For three periods the teams waged a scoreless duel, in which the Bears had the better of the gains in yardage. Then with ten minutes to play, Bronko Nagurski tossed a short pass to Red Grange, who was standing in the Spartan end zone.
The touchdown was all that the Bears needed to assure them of the championship. Tiny Engebretsen, however, kicked the ball between the wooden uprights and into the mezzanine for the full value of Red’s score.
Then, just before the end, Mule Wilson of the Spartans, ready to punt from behind his own goal line, fumbled Clare Randolph’s pass from center and the ball rolling out of the end zone automatically gave the near champions two more points.
. . . The playing field also was not to the liking of John Doehring, the Bears’ long distance forward passer, whose first throw nearly landed in the mezzanine.
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The 1934 championship game against the Giants was known as the “Sneaker Game” because New York wore gym shoes for surer footing and prevailed. Wilfrid Smith reports on Dec. 10, 1934:
GIANTS WHIP BEARS FOR PRO
TITLE, 30-13; NEW YORK GETS 4 TOUCHDOWNS IN 4TH PERIOD
New York, Dec. 9– . . . In searching for an adequate reason for the collapse of the Bears in the final fateful 10 minutes, the strategy of Steve Owen, Giants’ coach, must be given proper consideration.
The gridiron turf was frozen solid. All during the first half the players of both teams had extreme difficulty keeping their feet and at least one possible additional Chicago touchdown was not made because battering Bronko Nagurski and the fleet footed Gene Ronzani and Keith Molesworth lacked the sure footing to make their charges effective.
At the start of the second half many of the Giants, including all of the back field men, came back to the field shod in rubber gymnasium shoes.
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The Bears quarterback’s play came in for special praise by the Tribune’s Wilfrid Smith after the famous 1940 title game, a 73-0 victory over the Washington Redskins:
SID LUCKMAN’S GENERALSHIP KEY TO VICTORY
WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 8–This is the story of the man who this afternoon directed the greatest team professional football ever has produced. It is the story of Sid Luckman, the Bears’ quarter back.
In the welter of records in this one-sided triumph by Chicago’s Bears over Washington’s Redskins, compounded from 11 touchdowns for 73 points, Luckman’s generalship unquestionably was the factor which smashed Washington’s defenses, and maintained a steady and irresistible attack which eventually turned this championship battle into a rout.
Not since the British sacked this city more than a 100 years ago has Washington seen such a rout. The thousands of loyal Redskins rooters, who had come to boo the Bears, stayed to roar bravos in spontaneous tribute to the incredible Chicago eleven. . . .
Grant that the Bears’ power and speed were perfection, Grant that the behemoths in the Bears’ line always outcharged their opponent, always rushed Washington’s passers so that eight tosses were intercepted. But in the first, second, and third touchdown drives Sid Luckman, an inspired genius, maneuvered this Chicago eleven as accurately as a chess master moves his pawns and kings.
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Another explanation for the 73-0 victory was Halas’ pioneering use of the T formation, as Wilfrid Smith noted on Dec. 10, 1940:
HALAS SERVES T A LA FOOTBALL IN WASHINGTON
Today the latest in football is also one of the oldest systems of attack. It is their T formation, in which the quarter back always handles the ball from center. This 40 year old offense, refurbished and geared for modern play, won the professional championship of the world for Chicago’s Bears. . . . The Bears revealed two plays they had not used in previous games. These were a reverse which was completely effective, principally because the quarter back handled the ball and a forward pass to a fourth eligible receiver on the back side of the defense.
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The Bears’ hopes slipped away in a second “sneaker game” on Dec. 30, 1956, as reported by George Strickler:
BEARS CRUSHED AND WHY!
New York, Dec. 30–The mighty Chicago Bears came into a cavernous deep freeze called Yankee Stadium here today and left as football’s greatest enigma, humiliated by the New York Giants, 47 to 7, in the National league’s 24th annual championship playoff.
Long after the last witness has forgotten the shocking details there will be a question of precisely what happened to the burly Western Division champions.
Were they overtrained, worked out, and stale? Did they have no pride in achievement? Did the Giants find some defect in the Bears’ defensive armour? Or were they just overrated, utterly lacking in the competitive qualities of a champion?
Along Broadway tonight they were leaning toward the latter proposition. When the chips were down, with money and title at stake, these mighty Bears could not rise to the challenge of a Giant team that had played its best against them four weeks ago and only succeeded in tying, 17 to 17.
The best hot weather team in football, they were saying, ran into a cold snap and congealed. The Bears were no more than a good practice opponent for a resolute Giant team that romped recklessly over a frozen gridiron in basketball shoes. . . .
No one would have believed that the Bears ever would be caught again as they were in the Polo Grounds, just across the Harlem River from here in 1934 when the Giants, in stolen basketball shoes, rallied for 27 points in the second half to snatch a world championship from the immortal Bronko Nagurski and associates.
. . . Tests in pre-game practice dictated sneakers, after an unscheduled cold wave had tightened up the gridiron which yesterday was sticky and heavy. The Giants resorted to conventional basketball shoes, the Bears to a sneaker with a different sole. It was a costly error in selection.
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The Tribune’s Cooper Rollow describes the Bears’ championship victory Dec. 29, 1963:
BEARS ARE AWED . . .
THEN THEY GO WILD!
Champions of the world. That’s what they were–champions of the world.
The Bears had a hard time believing it. As they stormed into the dressing room after yesterday’s 14 to 10 triumph over New York, the new champions quite obviously were numb.
And the frigid temperature had absolutely nothing to do with it. A man can get used to the cold. But it takes a little time to get used to being a champion.
The Bears were champions. And they didn’t know how to act. They didn’t even know how to cheer. One by one they edged, almost self consciously, past the hysterical fans and into their Wrigley field quarters. But there was no loud, spontaneous uproar.
There was no uproar, that is, until their leader entered the room. George Halas walked in, and George Halas set the pace for the post-game celebration, just as he had called the shots all year.
“Go!” screamed Halas.
Then, and only then, did the Bears start yelling. They hollered magnificently.
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Cooper Rollow reports on the deaths of Willie Galimore and John Farrington, stars of the world champion 1963 team, in 1964.
2 BEARS STARS DIE
IN AUTO CRASH
RENSSELAER, Ind., July 26–Willie Galimore and John Farrington, star offensive members of the World Champion Chicago Bears, were killed tonight when Galimore’s car went out of control rounding a curve on a county trunk road west of here and crashed into a ditch.
Galimore, one of professional football’s great ball carriers, and Farrington, a pass catching end, were returning to the Bears’ camp at St. Joseph’s college here, where the team is preparing for the College All-Star game in Chicago on Aug. 7.
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The Bears reaped a bumper crop in the draft on Nov. 28, 1964. An excerpt from Cooper Rollow’s report:
N.F.L. TAKES 14 HOURS FOR TWO ROUNDS! BEARS WASTE NO TIME
It didn’t take the Chicago Bears long to stake claim to Dick Butkus, rugged Illinois linebacker and the toast of the midlands. The Bears, with three of the first six selections in the opening round, quickly tossed Butkus’ name into the telephonic hopper, then followed by acquiring negotiating rights to Gale Sayers, flashy Kansas half-back, and Steve DeLong, sturdy Tennessee lineman.
All three are yet to be signed, but Coach George Halas indicated confidence that the mission would be accomplished. . . .
The Bears were elated at their first three picks. “It was like holding an idiot’s hand in gin rummy,” said one staff member.
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Gale Sayers scored six touchdowns on Dec. 12, 1965, still a Bears record. George Strickler reports:
BEARS WIN; SIX TOUCHDOWNS BY SAYERS
The ghosts of Red Grange, Ernie Nevers, George McAfee and Jim Thorpe moved over in football’s Valhalla yesterday to make room for a mercurial rookie from Kansas, who tore up the record book and the sodden turf of Wrigley Field with one of the most spectacular demonstrations of ball carrying in the history of the sport.
Leading a Chicago Bear team that was hellbent on revenge for an opening day humiliation, Gale Sayers staked out squatter’s rights on the San Francisco 49ers’ end zone, scoring six touchdowns and contributing 36 points to a 61 to 20 triumph by which the Bears preserved a mathematical chance of bringing a championship playoff to the north side on Jan. 2.
Operating on a field made slick by intermittent showers, and considered more suited to San Francisco’s heavy power backs than his twinkle-toed ballet technique, Gallopin’ Gale raced 80 yards with a screen pass for the Bears’ first touchdown in the third minute of play.
He returned a punt 85 yards in the fourth period, charged 50 yards on a pitchout in the fourth minute of the third quarter, and had other touchdowns of 21 yards, 7 yards, and one foot. None was routine. All were spectacular, including the one from one foot out on which he landed on his head with his feet straight up in the air.
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The Bears’ worst season? Easy. 1969. Cooper Rollow reports on Dec. 22, 1969:
BEARS LOSE 13TH, 20-3
The Bears wrote finis to the darkest chapter in their 50-year history yesterday, and after the 20 to 3 loss to the Detroit Lions, Coach Jim Dooley mumbled softly, “I guess you’d have to say I’m glad the season is over.”
The season is over, all right. It ended with the Bears saddled with a 1-13 record, and with several hundred of the crowd of 41,879 hanging out of the box seats and massed along the sidelines giving Dooley’s men the Chicago version of the Bronx cheer as they shuffled into the dressing room.
Once again, the Bears did their thing. They did what they have done best all during this disastrous 1969 campaign–lose.
. . . But the silver linings, just as they have been all season, were few and far between for the Bears. There was Sayers’ performance. And there was Dick Butkus, everybody’s all-time all-pro middle linebacker.
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Robert Markus’ column on the death of Brian Piccolo, published June 17, 1970:
BRIAN PICCOLO REAL FIGHTER–ALL THE WAY TO THE END
Early yesterday morning came the dread word we all knew was near. Brian Piccolo is dead. Brian Piccolo, Brian the fighter, Brian of the stout heart, lost the big one. He never had a chance. He must have known that, but the knowledge would not have stopped Brian from fighting this thing that was killing him. That was not his way.
Brian was always a fighter. He came out of Wake Forest, the leading college runner in the nation, and the pros said he was too small. Brian fought it. He fought it and he won because even in the land of giants it is the size of the heart that matters most.
He was the backup man for football’s most exciting runner and it did not appear he would play much football for the Bears. Brian fought that, too, and he won. He won because he was the kind of player who would run into men half again his size to bleed out an extra yard, the kind of player who would hang onto a pass even when he knew a pair of rock-hard goliaths were waiting to vivisect him as soon as he touched the ball.
Simply because he wanted so much to play football he made himself into the kind of player the Bears could not afford to keep glued to the bench.
Without warning during the middle of last season came Brian’s biggest fight. I thought he was going to win this one, too, just because he was Brian Piccolo, Brian the fighter, Brian of the stout heart. And because I so very much wanted him to win it.
It is very hard to think of the right words to convey what I feel about Brian Piccolo. So I will just say this. Brian Piccolo was a Bear.
There have been some great players and some great men who have worn the Bear uniform. George Halas, Red Grange, George Trafton, Bronko Nagurski, George McAfee, Sid Luckman, Bulldog Turner, Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus. I don’t think any of them had any more appreciation for what it meant to wear that uniform than did Brian Piccolo.
None had to fight so hard to wear it, to give so much of himself, as did Brian Piccolo. His Bear teammates know this to be true. They worked and played alongside him and they know what kind of man he was. . . .
If the Bears will truly dedicate every minute of every game to the memory of Brian Piccolo they still may not win the Super Bowl or even a division championship. But they will win back their pride and their self respect. That would be Brian’s greatest victory.
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Don Pierson reports on a Bears draft Jan. 28, 1975, that turned out rather well:
BEARS DRAFT BACK PAYTON IN FIRST ROUND
OUTLINED AGAINST a maze of telephones, computers, talent scouts, guesswork and runaway optimism, the Chicago Bears came out to the first day of the draft with “Gale Sayers” at tailback, “Franco Harris” at fullback, “John Mackey” at tight end and “Mike Reid” at defensive tackle.
Those are only aliases. Their real names are Walter Payton, Cid Edwards, Greg Latta and Mike Hartenstine.
Together they are expected to run, block and tackle the Bears out of their misery.
For an elated Coach Jack Pardee, the foursome should help him mount the kind of ball-control, running offense he likes. . . .
Payton, a 5-10 1/4, 200-pound halfback from Jackson State, was the best college runner in the country, according to everybody who is supposed to know. He was the Bears’ first pick and the man they said they wanted all along.
“When I get thru with Chicago they’ll be loving me,” said Payton. “I’m glad I went that high in the draft. I hadn’t really given much thought about who I was going with. I know Chicago is a nice place. . . . I know it’s cold in Chicago.”
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John Husar’s interview with new head coach Mike Ditka was published Jan. 24, 1982:
DITKA: `MY PERSONALITY IS BEARS’ PERSONALITY . . . THE TOUGHNESS’
The new coach of the Chicago Bears leaned against a pillar of the departure lounge at O’Hare.
Strangers stopped to bid him luck. Mike Ditka’s return smile was wan and weary. His dark pinstripe suit was rumpled and his eyes were surrounded by faint circles of gray.
It had been quite a day, quite a day and night, in fact. Two nights, in fact.
The press had cornered Ditka at dinner in the Tavern Club before he’d even signed a contract with George Halas. He fled to Su Casa, the Mexican place on Ontario Street, not for more food (“I go to Mexican restaurants maybe once a year, whether I need to or not”) but just to get away, to escape the probing.
So, he hunkered over coffee, soul-searching with friends. The night before, back in Dallas, Ditka had been kept awake by callers (those 37 unemployed assistant coaches in the National Football League are on the ball) and by eager thoughts for the day beyond.
“I’m excited, yeah,” Ditka said, awaiting a flight back to Dallas, where his wife Diana had put their house on the market within an hour of receiving the word. “But I’m also realistic. I know that if you don’t produce, all these good feelings, all these best wishes, quickly turn sour.” . . .
He first came here in 1961, a two-fisted, brawling, soon-to-be All-Pro tight end with the Monsters of the Midway.
. . . He left Chicago in an immature snit, he said, demanding a monetary status that later came to be unimportant. If he could do it again, he’d probably stay, he said.
Ditka, you see, loves Chicago. Wherever he went, he always dreamed of coming back.
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Tribune sports columnist David Condon’s tribute to the late George Halas, Nov. 1, 1983:
HALAS’ LEGACY CASTS A GIANT SHADOW
“When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name — He marks — not that you won or lost — but how you played the game.” — Grantland Rice
It came time, finally, Monday evening, to score the life of George Stanley Halas, the 88-year-old David who made professional football the Goliath of American sports.
But closing the book on the career of George S. Halas hardly is easy. Because the points he registered total tremendously, and, after all, the man did play the game with passion, fury and fairness.
Few ever played the game–in sports and life–as hard or as long as did the founder of the Chicago Bears.
Not many ever returned as much to the Great Scorer as was returned, over long years, by George Halas, a West Side Chicago tailor’s son who, despite success and plaudits and riches, never placed anything–not even his beloved football team–ahead of his family and the faith into which he was born.
Halas won a lot. In recent years, he lost a lot. But no one will say that Papa Bear did not play the game as it was meant to be played, whether he was playing through early or recent adversities or during the era of great good fortune when his Chicago Bears were recognized as one of history’s paramount sports dynasties.
And it is difficult, in this hour of heartbreak, to qualify the Bears as only one of sport’s all-time dynasties. It’s difficult because you know George died believing his Bears were THE dynasty.
Halas won easy. He lost hard. Yet in sum total, those who knew Halas best will argue that he wanted to be remembered as a man who gave everything–time, dedication and money–to everyone. . . .
These are only a few thoughts. A guy could write a book on George Stanley Halas. A real book. And maybe I shall, for they never will really close the book on the man.
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On Oct. 8, 1984, the Tribune’s Don Pierson reported on Walter Payton setting the all-time career rushing record:
A VIRTUOSO PERFORMANCE SENDS PAYTON SOARING OVER THE TOP
They came to see Walter Payton break Jim Brown’s rushing record Sunday. They saw it on a 6-yard pitchout in the third quarter. They had seen him dive over the goal line in the second quarter to put the Bears ahead of the New Orleans Saints to stay.
Now, as the Bears were running out the clock on their 20-7 victory, the media from around the country gathered in the locker room to get ready to probe Payton’s thoughts. Most of the crowd of 53,752 in Soldier Field had left.
They all missed him at his best.
Here was Payton, on his 32d and final carry of the day, running over Saints’ safety Frank Wattelet and stopping to pick him up before bouncing back to the huddle himself. He was not finished.
With 50 seconds left, he led a sweep for fullback Matt Suhey full speed, looking for someone to block.
Coach Mike Ditka took him out with 20 seconds left.
. . . “When God said He would make a fullback or halfback, He might have said Gale Sayers or He might have said Jim Brown,” said Ditka. “But when He said He would make the best football player who ever lived, He probably said two men: Jim Thorpe and Walter Payton.”
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Phil Hersh’s profile of William “Refrigerator” Perry on Aug. 11, 1985:
HE’S LARGELY MAMA’S BOY
Maybe this belongs in Ripley’s. Maybe it should have a big, black headline in one of the scandal sheets everyone skims in the supermarket checkout line.
It is a story few would dare put in a daily newspaper.
It is one that had to be kept in the deep freeze as long as William Perry was cooling his heels in South Carolina. If one word of this had leaked out, The Refrigerator might have seemed like nothing more than a picnic cooler. Now it can be told.
I watched William Perry go seven hours without eating.
This happened in Aiken, S.C., over the Fourth of July weekend. From the time Perry met me at the Augusta, Ga., airport until the time I left him at his two-bedroom townhouse on the outskirts of Aiken, the Refrigerator never raided one.
Easy as pie, you say?
It would have been if all we had done was chew the fat in his living room. But we spent a couple hours at his mother’s house, where Inez Perry’s cooking had always been so good William says everything she made was his favorite dish.
“William wasn’t choosy,” Inez Perry says.
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Don Pierson reports Jan. 13, 1986, on the NFC victory that put the Bears in the Super Bowl.
SUPERB BEARS IN SUPER BOWL
The Bears are in the Super Bowl.
Cut it out and paste it up. Roll it around your tongue. Say it once, twice, as many times as it takes to wrap it around your mind.
The Bears wrapped Eric Dickerson and the Los Angeles Rams around their big fingers Sunday in a smashing 24-0 victory for the National Football Conference championship.
They left determined and favored to wrap a Super Bowl ring around their fingers when they play the New England Patriots, the American Football Conference champions, Jan. 26 in New Orleans.
In a season full of one-upsmanship, the shutout was one point better than the San Francisco 49ers’ 23-0 victory over the Bears for the NFC title a year ago. The Bears, who beat the New York Giants 21-0 last week, will enter Super Bowl XX as the only team ever to record two straight playoff shutouts.
They wanted the Miami Dolphins again to erase the only blemish on their record. But the Patriots will serve the purpose for which the Bears seem destined.
In another subdued locker room where a few cigars were the only signs of a victory celebration, Ditka turned to Robert Frost for explanation and further inspiration.
“There’s a poem, something about we’ve come many miles but still have miles to go,” said Ditka.
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On Jan. 26, 1986, the Bears won the Super Bowl in dominant fashion. Don Pierson’s report:
NO CONTEST: BEARS BEST
NEW ORLEANS– This is as good as it gets. The Bears won the Super Bowl 46-10 in an awesome display of football encompassing all the joy and fury of an awesome season.
Their destruction of the New England Patriots was so complete it went beyond Super Bowl proportions and recalled only the record 73-0 victory by the Bears over the Washington Redskins in the 1940 National Football League championship game.
The Bears have a tradition that transcends Super Bowls and Sunday they ended years of frustration for their city and themselves and showed a nation they play even better than they talk or sing.
They simply blew your minds like they said they would.
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Don Pierson says goodbye to Walter Payton on Nov. 2, 1999:
HE WENT FULL BORE, NO. 34
If sports provides metaphors for life, nothing rings truer than football’s running back, carrying the ball, struggling to get ahead, needing the help of friends, overcoming obstacles and enemies, striving for goals, getting knocked down, bouncing up again and again until reaching the end zone, triumphant.
Nobody ever ran a football better than Walter Payton, who died of cancer Monday at 45.
Because he did it for 13 years for the Chicago Bears, Payton’s grip on Carl Sandburg’s City of Big Shoulders was as strong as his handshake. His death makes the shoulders slump.
Because his exploits set magnificent athletic standards, his death seems all the more unbelievable. Indestructibly reliable on the field, how could he be so human and vulnerable away from it?
Payton was Chicago’s first hero of the superstar era, when the media spotlight first expanded athletic reality into 24-hour fantasy. He followed Ernie Banks and Bobby Hull and Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus and preceded Michael Jordan, who took fantasy to yet another level of imagination.
Payton stayed much closer to earth, by trade and personality. He captured the soul of a city with work habits and results that made steelworkers and hog butchers and ditch diggers proud.
Teammates remember not only his production, but his practices. No man ever played football harder and no child ever enjoyed it more. Often moody, more often playful, sometimes selfish, more often selfless, Payton never was absent.
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Rick Morrissey writes Nov. 7, 1999, about the reaction to Walter Payton’s death:
A TOUGH CITY WEEPS; THOUSANDS HONOR A REMARKABLE MAN’S LIFE
They shuffled quietly into the First Church of Walter Payton on Saturday, about 15,000 or so honorary pallbearers helping each other carry a heavy load.
Grown men, tough Chicago guys any other time of year, had teddy bears jammed under their arms to donate to Payton’s charitable foundation. There were women wearing No. 34 Bears jerseys whom you didn’t dare cross on this day for fear of a stiff-arm in return.
The Soldier Field memorial service for Payton, who died Monday of liver cancer at 45, featured proclamations and speeches by politicians, former teammates and current Bears, but this was a day for the people. This was a day for coming to grips with the idea that a living legend was now a legend.
“You come for the spirit. That’s what I came for,” said Agnes Kennedy, 74, of the South Side. “I like what he stood for. He stood for most of the things that are good in an individual. He tried. Most people don’t.”
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The Tribune’s John Mullin reporting on a memorable game Nov. 4, 2001:
UNBELIEVABLE, BUT BELIEVE IT; BROWN SCORES OT WINNER 2ND STRAIGHT WEEK
You are not going to believe this one.
Remember the San Francisco game last week? When the Bears scored two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter, then won in overtime when safety Mike Brown intercepted a deflected pass and scored the winning touchdown?
Well, they did it again Sunday, this time for a 27-21 win over the Cleveland Browns for their sixth straight victory and a 6-1 record heading into Sunday’s showdown for first place in the NFC Central with the Green Bay Packers (5-2).
Two touchdowns in the final 28 seconds, the second on a deflected “Hail Mary” pass in the end zone on a diving catch by running back James Allen. . . . Brown intercepting a pass deflected by defensive end Bryan Robinson and taking it 16 yards for another game-winning touchdown.
“We can’t keep doing this,” said wide receiver Marty Booker, who caught a 9-yard pass from quarterback Shane Matthews with 28 seconds left to make the score 21-14. “We’re giving people heart attacks.”
Last Sunday they scored twice in the final 4:08, plus the Brown touchdown. This time they cut it a little closer and surprised even themselves, not to mention what was left of the Soldier Field crowd of 61,569 that was chanting, “Let’s go, Bears! Let’s go, Bears!”
“I was thinking to myself, `I don’t know if I can take too many of these,’ ” said defensive end Phillip Daniels. “But then I thought some more and said, `Yeah, I can take a lot of these.’ “
“I’m telling you,” said injured quarterback Jim Miller, “I’m ready to go to Vegas and roll the dice.”
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Bonnie DeSimone profiled the Bears’ new hire as head coach, Lovie Smith, on Jan. 16, 2004:
THE GRITTY KID FROM BIG SANDY; LOVIE SMITH DEVELOPED HIS DRIVE AND TENACITY IN A TINY TOWN
BIG SANDY, Texas–Scratch between any two blades of grass here and you see how the town got its name.
There’s a layer of sand several feet deep in most places, but it’s no desert. Things grow in this part of East Texas: peaches, corn, watermelons, purple-hulled peas. For a stretch in the 1970s, Big Sandy produced remarkable football teams, teams that brought three straight state championship trophies back to a town with barely a thousand residents. The Wildcats were distinctive in that they always were outweighed and almost never outplayed.
“Quickness was what won us games,” recalled running back Lawrence Harper, Big Sandy Class of ’74.
Pound for pound, Lovie Lee Smith, Class of ’76, was the most tenacious and driven of them all.
Smith absorbed the lesson of size versus speed, and it became the bedrock of a defensive philosophy that eventually won him national recognition and, this week, the job of Bears head coach.
He absorbed other things too. He knew he could be defined by the city limits of his hometown, but not confined by them. He never lost his temper on the field that anyone can recall, and he never showed fatigue.
Smith’s second cousin, Gary Chalk, remembers Smith once taking his hand in the defensive huddle, dazed after delivering a particularly hard hit and too woozy to see what play the coach was calling. Chalk asked Lovie if he wanted to come out of the game.
“I’m not that dazed,” Smith said indignantly.
