1985 Bears given no respect for memorable victories

Sports Illustrated had a panel of 37 come up with the most memorable 50 NFL games of the Super Bowl era but nowhere on this list was a victory by the 1985 Bears.
Richard Dent recovers a fumble in the Dec. 2, 1985 Bears loss to Miami, the only defeat suffered by Chicago that year.
Richard Dent recovers a fumble in the Dec. 2, 1985 Bears loss to Miami, the only defeat suffered by Chicago that year. / RVR Photos-Imagn Images
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The team many regard as the NFL's greatest of all time never won one of the 50 most memorable games in the Super Bowl era.

At least that's what Sports Illustrated says. SI had a 37-member panel rank the 50 most memorable NFL games since the Super Bowl began, and the 1985 Chicago Bears of Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton, Richard Dent and William Perry only made it onto this list for losing.

Their 46-10 rout of New England in Super Bowl XX capped the most dominant playoff run ever with a 91-10 score for three games, but none of these wins or others in the regular season made it into the top 50 most memorable games. Their 38-24 loss in 1985 to the Dolphins, the only defeat in that season, made it to No. 17 on the list.

The reasoning for this game making the list was it was a franchise with the only unbeaten season preventing another team from doing the same, but numerous Bears said after the Super Bowl win that if they had won that game over Miami they might have lost later and maybe even in the postseason.

The other thing about the Dec. 2, 1985 loss to Miami was it didn't really make for good theater when the Bears had absolutely nothing to play for after they had just wrapped up the home-field edge through the playoffs, and when they didn't even have their quarterback healthy for the game.

McMahon sat out until very late when he was put in to basically loosen up his injured shoulder so he'd be ready to play the next game. The idea of the game pitting an unbeaten team against the Miami Dolphins' legacy was memorable. The game itself was not.

A 46-10 game was definitely memorable when no one had ever won a Super Bowl by so much or thoroughly dominated another team with their defense in a title game and postseason the way the Bears did. A train wreck can be memorable because of all the noise and explosions. What the Bears defense did to New England that day was like a train wreck.

Yet, it wasn't memorable enough for SI.

The Bears did have a team get on the Sports Illustrated list for something.

Their Dec. 31, 1988 "Fog Bowl" playoff win over the Eagles at Soldier Field made it at No. 40.

SI's comment summed it up well.

"Anyone who saw this game will never forget it. The problem? Almost nobody saw it."

The TV tape of the 20-12 win over the team coached by former Bears defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan is comical because of how little could be seen.

“While I was playing, you could see within five yards, 20 feet, 30 feet pretty good," Hampton was quoted as saying afterward. "But outside of that, then it would remind you of an old horror movie where the monster and wolf man would go into the fog bank and disappear. That’s what, it was."

The truth is, even those who were there couldn't really see it or at least all of it.

Maurice Douglass made the key game-sealing interception and there were very few in the old Soldier Field that day who could honestly say they saw him make it.

People on one side of the field would be cheering and the other side silent because they couldn't see what happened. One of the stranger things about it all was how the game had started in beautiful sunshine and warm weather for a New Year's Eve, before the fog rolled in to blanket the stadium.

The list of top 50 games includes things like the Raiders' fumble game with Ken Stabler coughing it up forward to cheat the Chargers out of a win and a Monday Night Football game in the 1978 regular season when Earl Campbell ran for 199 yards and the 1978 fumble game lost by the Giants to the Eagles.

Yet, there was no 1985 Bears win.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.