Last year, Rick Telander and Mike Ditka teamed up to write In Life, First You Kick Ass: Reflections on the 1985 Bears and Wisdom from Da Coach. Each Sunday, the Sun-Times will feature an excerpt from the book. This week: The Bears put eight players in the Pro Bowl and ''shuffle'' their way into the playoffs.
he Indianapolis Colts didn't stand a chance. They were the Bears' next opponent, at Soldier Field, and they weren't a very good team. And the Bears were seething.
The final score was 17-10 Bears, but it wasn't that close. Next up were the New York Jets, a 10-4 team that featured long-haired and flaky defensive end Mark Gastineau, known for sacking quarterbacks and doing a spastic celebratory dance afterward. The Bears won 19-6.
Everything seemed tainted since the Miami loss, but still, the fact was there: The Bears were a 14-1 team. We had one more regular-season game to go, against the Lions, who were an average team. It was there in Detroit, in their stupid dome, but if we played our game and never made mistakes like in the Miami game, we couldn't be beat.
Before that game the Pro Bowl teams were announced, and we had eight guys make the roster -- Payton, Hampton, Dent, Covert, Hilgenberg, Singletary, Wilson and even Dave Duerson, who was shocked as [bleep]. They all deserved it. But so did Fencik and Van Horne and Marshall and about five other guys.
Some of the hoopla came from another thing, though. A bunch of the guys, 10 of them, including Payton, Fridge, Fuller and McMahon, had used one of their days off to make some kind of rap video. I didn't even know what it was about, but real soon I see these giant ads, and it's called ''The Super Bowl Shuffle''!
My God, we have another regular-season game to play, and then we'll have to win two more games in the playoffs just to go to the Super Bowl. Talk about jumping the gun. But hey, I admired the guys' confidence, if that's what it was.
So we go to Detroit and we win our finale 37-17. Dennis Gentry -- little Pinkie -- runs a kickoff back for a touchdown, the first against the Lions in five years. And Wilber Marshall hits quarterback Joe Ferguson so hard right under the chin that you can see Ferguson is unconscious even before he hits the turf.
It was an odd game. Even though we won pretty easily, the game bothered me. It was blah.
I was certain a good team would beat us, maybe embarrass us. Well, I wasn't certain of that, but I feared it. I couldn't get the Dolphins game out of my mind.
Excerpted from In Life, First You Kick Ass: Reflections on the 1985 Bears and Wisdom from Da Coach (2005, Sports Publishing L.L.C.
) by Mike Ditka with the Sun-Times Rick Telander. It can be found in bookstores everywhere. The hardcover book can be purchased directly from the publisher by calling (877) 424-BOOK (2665) in the continental United States or online at www.
SportsPublishingLLC.com.
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