Chicago Bears Lore
by Roy Taylor © 2005-2014
In this section of www.bearshistory.com, we have written
stories on some issues and players that have played an interesting part of the
history of this franchise. Click on the links to go to the story.
Chicago Bears Lore: the Issues
It was a surprise to some when Jerry Angelo was fired as
General Manager by the Chicago Bears following the 2011 season. We take a
look back at the Jerry Angelo Era in
a four-part series. Although under Kyle Orton in 2008 it looked like the
Bears had started to figure out that it takes offense to win games, the
Chicago Bears Offense has been historically inept.
Dave Wannstedt was chosen by Michael McCaskey to succeed legendary
coach Mike Ditka in 1993.
Wannstedt's tenure was so inept we had to cover it. Other articles cover the
history of these other position groups:
Chicago Bears Tight Ends,
Chicago Bears Receivers, and of course you can read about all of those
Bears quarterbacks that have started since 1979 in the
Chicago Bears Quarterbacks article. In fact we're sure this is where
those damn Packer fans get the information for the signs they hold up at
Lambeau every year. Morons. We also have what we feel to be a pretty good
article about Soldier Field
History, covering the building from its construction in 1924, to all
the plans to replace it, to the full remodel in 2002-2003. To round out the
stories on the issues, we have an article about the
Chicago Bears Pass Rush that is so critical to Lovie Smith's cover 2
defense (and is exactly what is wrong with the pass defense in 2008), and an
article about the Mike Ditka-Buddy Ryan
feud that has been ongoing since 1982.
Chicago Bears Lore: The Players
Any discussion of great Chicago Bears players has to start
with the first: founder, player, owner, the legendary
George S. Halas, who founded the Bears in 1920, coached them until 1967
and remained involved in football operations until his death in 1983. We had
the opportunity to meet and interview Al
Baisi, an offensive lineman that played for Halas for three seasons,
and created an article for him. Baisi shared fond recollections of his Bears
career with us prior to his death in 2005. Of course this site would not be
complete without covering Mike Ditka,
the man Halas entrusted to bring
glory back to the Bears. And Ditka did
just that. Two more Bears players that are always mentioned in any discussion
of the greatest at their positions are Dick
Butkus and Gale Sayers. Butkus
and Sayers were both drafted by the Bears in the first round in 1965, and their
jerseys were retired together in a driving rainstorm on Halloween night, 1994.
Also playing for the Bears in the 1960's was
Brian Piccolo, whose courageous battle with cancer was portrayed in the
movie Brian's Song. A few years
after Piccolo's death, the Bears
drafted another running back that would become a Bears legend:
Walter Payton. Payton would give thrills and laughter to Bears fans for
13 seasons, before he too died tragically in 1999. Payton's teammate
Otis Wilson may have matched Sweetness
in the amount of laughter he was able to generate, and made sure opposing
quarterbacks didn't forget his hits. We have also written about four of our
favorite players from Mike Ditka's post-super
bowl teams: Quarterback Jim Harbaugh,
Running Backs Neal Anderson and
Brad Muster, and hard-nosed Receiver
Tom Waddle. After the careers of those four were over, the Bears
drafted two running backs that turned out to be absolute turds in
Rashaan Salaam and Curtis Enis.
Hey, even writing about turds can be fun. Finally, we threw in two articles
about a couple of tough Bears players that probably won't be remembered as
legends in Quarterback Jim Miller and
Offensive Tackle James "Big Cat"
Williams.
Chicago Bears Lore: On the Field
We compared and contrasted the 1991 Chicago Bears and 2002
Chicago Bears home openers against the Minnesota Vikings in our article about
the Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota
Vikings. Guess what? The Bears won both games. Also covered is a new
article on the 55 most
memorable Chicago Bears games since 1979.
A Short History of the Chicago Bears
It all started on September 20, 1920, in the showroom of Ralph
Hay's Hupmobile auto agency in Canton, OH. On that day, representatives of
fourteen professional football teams sat on the running boards of cars to form
what is now the National Football League. George Halas, an outstanding End that
played his college ball at the University of Illinois, represented his team,
the Decatur Staleys. The team had been formed the preceeding year by the A.E.
Staley company of Decatur, IL, as a way to keep his employees happy.
Halas' team played the 1920 season as the Decatur Staleys. In
1921, Staley decided he could no longer afford to subsidize the team, so he
suggested that Halas move the team to Chicago, where it might survive, and gave
him $5,000 to keep the Staley name for one year. Thus, for 1921, the team
became the Chicago Staleys and played their games at Cubs Park. The following
year, Halas surmised that since the team was playing in the stadium of the
Chicago Cubs, his team ought to be named the Chicago Bears. The Navy and Orange
color scheme still worn by the Bears today was derived from Halas' alma mater,
Illinois.
Halas spent an enormous amount of time personally scouting
players, as well as playing for his team. Often times, he declared that he
"just had to have" certain players he saw play in college. First, Halas signed
Harold "Red" Grange, an outstanding running back from the U of I, to an unheard
of salary of $100,000. In 1925-26, Grange and the Bears went on a
"Barnstorming" tour, during which they played 19 games with only a week of
rest. Historians have concluded that this tour is what "made" pro football.
Later, Halas would acquire other players such as Bronko Nagurski and Sid
Luckman, who took Chicago to titles in '32, '33, '40, '41 & '46. During the
1940's, the Bears Fight Song was written, and the team revolutionized football
with the T-Formation.
The 1950's Bears featured many brawling players such as Ed
"The Claw" Sprinkle, Bill George, George Connor, and Harlon Hill, but won no
championships. Finally in 1963, the Bears won their first NFL Championship
since 1946 over the New York Giants at Wrigley Field. That '63 team defeated
the Green Bay Packers twice, featuring a brusing defense along with a steady
offense. Unfortunately after '63, it was a long downhill slide, as the Bears
didn't make the playoffs again until 1977.
One could only expect that the decade of the 1970's would be
dismal after witnessing its first event. After finishing 1969 with a 1-13
record, the Bears flipped a coin with the Pittsburgh Steelers to determine who
would get the first pick in the 1970 draft. Pittsburgh won, and drafted
Hall-of-Fame Quarterback Terry Bradshaw. The Bears sent their pick to Green Bay
for a bunch of washed-up veterans, and the decade was history. Worse, Chicago
running back Brian Piccolo succumbed to cancer at the age of 26 in June of that
year, which would lead to the movie Brian's Song, forever cementing Piccolo and
the Bears in millions of minds across the globe.
The Bears made the playoffs and exited after one game in 1977
and 1979, but didn't make a serious run until 1984 under former player/Head
Coach Mike Ditka. In 1985, the Bears took the world by storm as they won their
first championship since '63, cutting a music video along the way. Despite
having the pure talent to win many more championships, the team never went back
to the Super Bowl, and by 1992, the core of Super Bowl Bears had run their NFL
course. Mike Ditka was fired, and Dave Wannstedt hired by Team President
Michael McCaskey. Wannstedt took the team back to the playoffs in 1994, but
went 24-40 in his next four years, and was dismissed in 1998.
Dick Jauron became the 12th Head Coach in Bears history on
January 24, 1999. After two forgettable seasons, Jauron shepharded the Bears to
a magical 13-3 record and home playoff game in 2001. After two more forgettable
seasons, Jauron was fired, and Lovie Smith hired in 2004 as the 13th Head Coach
in Chicago Bears History.
In 2005, Lovie Smith made good on two of the three promises he
made when hired by Chicago. His team swept the Green Bay Packers, and clinched
their first NFC North division title. His third goal, a Super Bowl
championship, remained to be attained.
Smith followed up the impressive sophomore campaign in 2006 by
returning the Bears to the Super Bowl for the first time in 21 years, but the
Bears fell short in their quest for the title, losing to the Indianapolis Colts
in Miami.
High expectations in 2007 simply brought heartache, as the
Bears became the latest in a long string of Super Bowl losers to not return to
the playoffs.
Smith's Bears also missed the playoffs in 2008 and 2009. In
2010, the Bears surprised the league by making it to the NFC Championship Game
behind a resurgent defense. But they tragically lost at home to the Green Bay
Packers, the team Smith committed to beat as a first priority. After Smith's
teams wilted at the end of the following two seasons, and he lost nine of his
last 11 games to the Packers, he was fired at the conclusion of the 2012
season.
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