The 1985 Bears

[AlexJones]

are the most overrated team in the history of football. Under today's rules, I think even Tony Romo could toy around with that team. Hell, even Seattle might look like an elite passing team against them

[Blake]

But they got that cool song

[spurraider21]

flip it around. how would today's passing teams fare against the 85 bears given the '85 rules?

[Pelicans78]

Their offense was very good that year, probably the best in the NFC. That team was dominate as a whole. They blew out so many teams that year, and only allowed 13 points in the playoffs/Super Bowl. One of the most intimidating teams ever.

[Avante]

They gave up an average of 12 points a game while scoring 28 a game. They held seven teams to 10 points or less and in three playoff games only gave up 14 points, shutting out two playoff teams.

That is ridiculous.

I have never seen a more dominate team, they were on a whole other level. They would have beaten any of those Steelers teams, totally destroyed those Packer teams.

They had an un-real defense, the great Walter Payton, the leagues fastest wide receiver (and he'd be that today) a great coach and a stud QB who knew how to motivate...that...team.

Hardly overrated.

But........for them to lose the one game they did in 85 on a Monday night to a Dolphins team trying to protect that earlier Dolphins team undefeated record was stuff of Hollywood and the movies.

[AlexJones]

They gave up an average of 12 points a game while scoring 28 a game. They held seven teams to 10 points or less and in three playoff games only gave up 14 points, shutting out two playoff teams.

That is ridiculous.

I have never seen a more dominate team, they were on a whole other level. They would have beaten any of those Steelers teams, totally destroyed those Packer teams.

They had an un-real defense, the great Walter Payton, the leagues fastest wide receiver (and he'd be that today) a great coach and a stud QB who knew how to motivate...that...team.

Hardly overrated.

But........for them to lose the one game they did in 85 on a Monday night to a Dolphins team trying to protect that earlier Dolphins team undefeated record was stuff of Hollywood and the movies.

:lmao Jim McMahon "a stud"
:lol glorified Russell Wilson

[Infinite_limit]

Not much success before or after the Title takes shine off their accomplishment in my eyes. Beating the Rams in NFC Title Game & Patriots in Super Bowl?

[The Gemini Method]

Most overrated? Probably not that's a stretch. They did have a great number of hall-of-famers and what Avante listed a defense that blitzed through the postseason. Granted, they did face a lucky to be there Patriots team. There are teams that would be deserving of that moniker even if it is misleading. It is funny reading a thread created by the Lions as if they've been of any significance since the Wayne Fontes days and even then were "overrated" on occasion as well.

[JoeTait75]

Granted, the Bears did play one of the worst Super Bowl qualifiers ever in the '85 Patriots. But they also played the other three dominant NFC teams of the decade that season- San Francisco, Washington, the Giants- and beat the piss out of all three of them. And no AFC team would have beaten them in the Super Bowl. Miami wouldn't have beaten them regardless of the way the regular-season meeting turned out, imo.

I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. For that one season the Bears were as powerful as any team that has ever played the game. They never got back to another Super Bowl and they didn't have the staying power of the other NFC powerhouses- for a variety of reasons- but you can't take 1985 away from them.

[Pelicans78]

That 85 Patriots were on fire in the 2nd half of the year and steamrolled through the playoffs with road wins against 3 really good teams in the Jets, Raiders, and Dolphins. They were no joke by any means. They just self-destructed in the first half of the Super Bowl and made too many mistakes against a powerful team.

But that Bears team was loaded. They blew out so many teams that season. The one that stuck out was the 44-0 beatdown at Dallas who won the NFC East that year. That Bears team was intimidating. They were 14-2 the next season but lost to a really good Redskins team after Ditka made the mistake of playing Flutie. They lost to the Redskins again the following season who ended up winning the Super Bowl easily. The 1988 Bears team was really good, but made got blasted at home in the NFC Title game to Montana and company who ended up winning the Super Bowl. The big reason why the Bears didn't win another Super Bowl was due to McMahon not staying healthy and the Fridge eating himself out of shape. He was a gifted dominant player in 1985.

[JoeTait75]

That 85 Patriots were on fire in the 2nd half of the year and steamrolled through the playoffs with road wins against 3 really good teams in the Jets, Raiders, and Dolphins. They were no joke by any means. They just self-destructed in the first half of the Super Bowl and made too many mistakes against a powerful team.

But that Bears team was loaded. They blew out so many teams that season. The one that stuck out was the 44-0 beatdown at Dallas who won the NFC East that year. That Bears team was intimidating. They were 14-2 the next season but lost to a really good Redskins team after Ditka made the mistake of playing Flutie. They lost to the Redskins again the following season who ended up winning the Super Bowl easily. The 1988 Bears team was really good, but made got blasted at home in the NFC Title game to Montana and company who ended up winning the Super Bowl. The big reason why the Bears didn't win another Super Bowl was due to McMahon not staying healthy and the Fridge eating himself out of shape. He was a gifted dominant player in 1985.

The Patriots had a couple of problems going into that Super Bowl. They played the AFC title game in Miami on an emotional high- they'd never won in the Orange Bowl before that game, iirc- and came out flat against the Bears in New Orleans. And after putting 255 rushing yards on Miami's defense two weeks earlier they abandoned the run game before they even got off the bus in the Super Bowl and tried to air it out with Tony Eason, who was scared shitless of Chicago's defense going back to an early-season loss in which the Bears beat the hell out of him. That strategy was doomed from the get-go. They probably wouldn't have been able to run on Chicago's defense- no one did- but they could have at least gone with what got them to that point.

I probably sold those Patriots a little short. They had a good team- excellent defensively, ran the ball well- but they really only got two good years out of that group.

[Sean Cagney]

That Bears team was no joke man, they were well rounded. This thread is some shit.

[Avante]

:lmao Jim McMahon "a stud"
:lol glorified Russell Wilson

Never saw him play did ya? Comparing him to RW tells me that.

They used the perfect formula for winning in the NFL. Win the TO battle, run the ball and stuff the run, pressure the QB, there it is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCo_ThcnSSI

Speaking of dominate teams...

Would anyone here believe an all black Tennessee HS that won 78 games in a row, and in the first 58, no opponet crossed the fifty yard line on them?

[Infinite_limit]

Would anyone here believe an all black Tennessee HS that won 78 games in a row, and in the first 58, no opponet crossed the fifty yard line on them?
I do know that De La Salle would whip their ass

http://www.calhisports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sumner-houston-with-flag-girls-576.jpg

[Avante]

I do know that De La Salle would whip their ass

http://www.calhisports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sumner-houston-with-flag-girls-576.jpg

De La Salle plays a whole other level of football than some small Tennessee school. We do have to look at that. Not unlike Division III vs Division I.

[Avante]

The thing about the 85 Bears was how they really sold the...bully on the block...personna like no other team before or after. It jumped off the tv screen at ya.

But....the most dominate team of all time was Michigan. From 1901-1905 they lost but one game 2-0, they scored over 2000 points giving up....36. Scored over 100 points four times, pitched a shutout 50 times. Amazing!

[chunticakes]

Dominant team.

Not dominate team.

[Blake]

Why did they fall off the cliff in 86?

[JoeTait75]

Why did they fall off the cliff in 86?

They really didn't. They went 14-2. But McMahon got hurt late in the season (on a cheap shot by Charles Martin of the Packers) and Ditka alienated a good part of the roster by bringing in Doug Flutie and turning him into the teacher's pet. Flutie started the '86 playoff game against the Redskins and was horrible.

Long term, what killed the Bears was a lack of firepower on offense. They were still great on defense for several years after 1985, but the 49ers were great on both sides of the ball and had the best QB in the game. San Francisco rolled out Joe Montana and the Bears countered with guys like Steve Fuller and Mike Tomczak. They were bringing a knife to a gunfight when it came to the QB matchup.

[Girasuck]

They gave up an average of 12 points a game while scoring 28 a game. They held seven teams to 10 points or less and in three playoff games only gave up 14 points, shutting out two playoff teams.

That is ridiculous.

I have never seen a more dominate team, they were on a whole other level. They would have beaten any of those Steelers teams, totally destroyed those Packer teams.

They had an un-real defense, the great Walter Payton, the leagues fastest wide receiver (and he'd be that today) a great coach and a stud QB who knew how to motivate...that...team.

Hardly overrated.

But........for them to lose the one game they did in 85 on a Monday night to a Dolphins team trying to protect that earlier Dolphins team undefeated record was stuff of Hollywood and the movies.
Pretty much everything he said.

I don't play this card much given the track record of the teams I like, but I'm gonna here. For a LIONS fan...yes, a LIONS fan to say anything about a Super Bowl winning team is a fucking joke. But I guess when your name is Alex Jones that's expected.

Please AlexJones, please explain to me how Super Bowl XX was an inside job from the NFL and how the Bears paid off the refs. Then go back to your stupid pathetic radio show and spew more bullshit.

[Blake]

They really didn't. They went 14-2. But McMahon got hurt late in the season (on a cheap shot by Charles Martin of the Packers) and Ditka alienated a good part of the roster by bringing in Doug Flutie and turning him into the teacher's pet. Flutie started the '86 playoff game against the Redskins and was horrible.

Long term, what killed the Bears was a lack of firepower on offense. They were still great on defense for several years after 1985, but the 49ers were great on both sides of the ball and had the best QB in the game. San Francisco rolled out Joe Montana and the Bears countered with guys like Steve Fuller and Mike Tomczak. They were bringing a knife to a gunfight when it came to the QB matchup.

Yeah I vaguely remember all that.

Wasn't long before Jim Harbaugh came along

[FromWayDowntown]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/01/richard-dent-still-blames-ditka-flutie-for-bears-playoff-failure/


Hall of Fame former Bears defensive end Richard Dent was the MVP of Super Bowl XX, but it still bugs him, nearly three decades later, that that was the only Super Bowl he ever played in. And Dent blames two men for that: Mike Ditka and Doug Flutie.

Dent said on 670 The Score in Chicago that the 1985 Bears thought they were going to be a dynasty, but Ditka cost them the opportunity to reach more Super Bowls after that year by failing to figure out the quarterback situation and playing Flutie when starter Jim McMahon got hurt.

“Well, we are going to be king of the hill all the time,” Dent said, via the Chicago Tribune. “And we came back three years in a row and had home-field advantage. Our coach couldn’t figure out the right quarterback to play. The disappointing part to me is that we only got one out of it. We should have been the first team ever to win three Super Bowls in a row. It was there in the taking, but we didn’t manage that one position right.”

Dent said that if Ditka hadn’t started Flutie, who at the time was an inexperienced 24-year-old, in the playoffs after the 1986 season, the Bears would have won Super Bowl XXI, too.

“Mike didn’t manage that quarterback position,” Dent said. “Bringing Doug Flutie in and thinking that he’s gonna come in and be on a team for three weeks and start him in a playoff game? Hell, I mean you’re trying to change the name on the Super Bowl trophy to Mike Ditka from Vince Lombardi when you do something like that. We had won with [Mike] Tomczak and [Steve] Fuller. That’s all we needed to do is stay with that plan.”

The Bears lost in the playoffs after the 1987 and 1988 seasons, too, and Flutie wasn’t around for those, so he doesn’t deserve any of the blame for that. But Dent is only the most recent of a number of former Bears who have said they’re still angry that Ditka botched the quarterback situation in 1986. That failure to repeat remains a bitter pill to swallow for the 1986 Bears, all these years later.

There's some truth to the complaint. The Bears won a playoff game in 1984 with Fuller (at Washington) to reach the NFC title game, but lost to what was probably the best of the Walsh 49'ers teams. In 1985, a healthy McMahon (coupled with that defense) meant a romp to the title. When McMahon went down in Week 12, Ditka initially replaced him with Mike Tomczak, who started and won the next two games, but Ditka just had to work Flutie in and eventually had Flutie assume the entire offense. Given that Tomczak had been a part of the team the year before, I suspect he had a fairly good amount of support among the players and that Ditka's decision to go with Flutie was not a popular one.

I think the 85 Bears couldn't really be overrated defensively. At their best, they were basically unblockable up front; nobody had really figured out how to protect against the chaos the 46 offered yet and they had athletes all over the edge (Dent, Wilson, Marshall, Duerson) to make teams pay for any bit of indecision in their protection schemes. They had beasts in the middle in McMichael and Perry (who wasn't yet ridiculously fat), they had Hampton, who was both a strong pass rusher and run stopper, and Singletary to clean up anything that got past the onrushing horde. They weren't great on the corners and Fencik was at the end of the line as a free safety, but they were good enough and the scheme made corner play and safety coverage less important by forcing QBs to make very quick reads in the face of the relentless pressure. Nobody learned that better than Tony Eason, who all but quit during the first half of Super Bowl XX. They're a very different sort of defense than the 70's Steelers, who excelled with great players at each level, or the 00's Ravens, who could just out-physical their opponents. But I don't think it's overreaching to call them one of the greatest defenses ever.

As a whole, the 85 Bears probably weren't as good as the '78 Steelers, the '84 49'ers, the '91 Redskins, the '92 Cowboys or a small handful of other teams. But there aren't a lot of other teams that could be considered to have been better.

[AlexJones]

:lmao 70's Steelers

[Avante]

The funny thing asbout the Steelers is that for years they were the laughing stock of the league. They had one great player a fullback John Henry Johnson. Prior to 1971 (1933 first season) they had never won more than 9 games in any season.They had 26 losing seasons. Then from 72-80 they went....88-34, in 1978 they scored 356 only giving up 195.

Those 70's Steelers had...

Mike Webster
Terry Bradshaw
Franco Harris
Lynn Swan
John Stallworth
"Mean" Joe Greene
Jack Lambert
Jack Ham
Mel Blount

..make the Hall of Fame

a nice mix of small/big school guys there. Only those Packer teams of the 60's can rival that.

[spurraider21]

how would today's pass happy offenses fare in the 70's given the different sets of rules?

[Avante]

how would today's pass happy offenses fare in the 70's given the different sets of rules?

I think they would have done great if that passing team also had a solid D. It wouldn't work too well if constantly trying to come from behind.

But.....as we saw with the Ravens and Seahawks, you win that TO battle, run/stuff the run you don't need to throw the ball all around.

[DeadlyDynasty]

The 1984 49ers were better and should be recognized more imo

[Pelicans78]

The 1987 Niners team was their best regular season team ever. Montana getting hurt may have cost them the Super Bowl. They had two epic games with the Saints who were 12-3 that year.

I just remember that Niners team beating the hell out of people late in the year. Rice was a monster throughout the year. But Montana got hurt and Young struggled in the playoff loss against the Vikings.

[JoeTait75]

1987 may very well have been the best 49er team of the decade. They were 1st in the NFL in both total offense and total defense and Jerry Rice caught 22 TD passes in 12 games. They played the Browns in a Sunday night game out in Candlestick that year and beat them 38-24 in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the final score indicated. Montana and Rice took a blowtorch to the best secondary in football that night. The Browns were really good in 1987- the best Browns team since the merger, which admittedly isn't saying much. But they couldn't hang with that 49er team.

[Pelicans78]

1987 may very well have been the best 49er team of the decade. They were 1st in the NFL in both total offense and total defense and Jerry Rice caught 22 TD passes in 12 games. They played the Browns in a Sunday night game out in Candlestick that year and beat them 38-24 in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the final score indicated. Montana and Rice took a blowtorch to the best secondary in football that night. The Browns were really good in 1987- the best Browns team since the merger, which admittedly isn't saying much. But they couldn't hang with that 49er team.

I remember that Sunday Night game. I was rooting hard for the Browns since the Saints were right behind the Niners in the NFC West standings. But Montana/Rice were unreal that game. That was a really good Browns team. Very good. A Super Bowl caliber team and the Niners won easily. But the Niners did that throughout the season.

The Niners and Saints had the two best records in the league at 13-2 and 12-3. They had two epic matches that season. The Saints defense kept the Niners in check and the Saints had a really good running game as well. The Niners won at the Dome earlier in the season 24-22 when Morten Andersen missed a 52 yard FG to win the game. The Saints then won their last 9 regular season games which included a win at Candlestick after the Saints blocked a 47 yard FG at the gun. The was the biggest Saints regular season win in history until 2000 (when Aaron Brooks led an upset win at the road at the Greatest Show on Turf Rams to help win the NFC West).

Then a 8-7 Vikings team which only made the playoffs when the Cardinals lost in the final week at Dallas ended up beating the Saints and the Niners in the playoffs.

[Avante]

I have a great book on football put out by SI.

This is how they ranked the great teams.

1.Cleveland Browns 1946-55, they played in the title game 10 years in a row winning 7. The only thing is they played in the All American Conference (as did the Niners)

2.Green Bay Packers 1960-1967

3.Pittsburgh Steelers 1972-1979

4.San Francisco 49ers 1981-1992

5.Chicago Bears 1932-43

6.Miami Dolphins 1970-1974

7.Canton Bulldogs 1922-1923

8.Oakland/LA Raiders 1967-1985

9.Green Bay Packers 1929-1932

10.Detroit Lions 1952-1957

I realize this is about "one" season, but what the hell.

[AlexJones]

:lmao none of those teams could survive for 3 quarters against the 2001-04 Patriots.

[Avante]

:lmao none of those teams could survive for 3 quarters against the 2001-04 Patriots.

Write SI and tell them that.

[AlexJones]

Write SI and tell them that.

Bet on Tennessee ATS tomorrow.. free money

[Avante]

Bet on Tennessee ATS tomorrow.. free money

Talk me into it, break it down.

[AlexJones]

Talk me into it, break it down.

Free money.

[chunticakes]

Free money.

:lol