It’s the Season for Miracles, and Bears Keep One Going, Beating Falcons, 36-0

JIM HARRIS--YUOR GAME BALL

Dear Jim Harris: One of your buddies on the Chicago Bears cannot spell the word your. What is written above is the way the game ball from Sunday’s 36-0 victory over the Atlanta Falcons at Soldier Field was inscribed, before it was sent to you. But they are thinking of you. Their hearts are in the right place.

Sadly, yours is not. Your poor heart has given out on you, and as you lie there in a Rockford, Ill., hospital bed--”waiting for a miracle,” as Walter Payton put it--your one joy in life is watching the unbeaten Bears play football.

Payton spoke to you Saturday night, before going out Sunday and running for 100-plus yards for the seventh straight week, tying the NFL record held by O.J. Simpson and Earl Campbell. He scored on a 40-yard run and rushed for 102 yards in three periods and played wonderfully in the game that he and the Bears dedicated to you.

You know what it is like to be a football player. You were an All-City center at your high school in Rockford, Illinois’ second-largest city. But that was when you were young and strong. At 34, you suffered a heart attack. Heart surgery followed in the years to come, twice. Now you are 41 and hanging on for dear life.

“Here’s a guy on his last legs,” Payton said, “his last lap, waiting for a miracle, his body deteriorating so badly that he can’t take it much longer, and the two most important things to him were making his peace with the Lord and talking to Mike Ditka and myself about the Bears.”

As soon as the Atlanta game ended, Ditka and Payton made a point of passing along heartfelt wishes and the game ball. “Here’s a guy who is hurting and we’d like to do something for him, anything we can,” Ditka said.

What the Bears did on the field was demolish another opponent. Not only did they improve their record to 12-0, joining the 1934 Bears and 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only NFL teams ever to win their first dozen games, but they racked up their second straight shutout and have now outscored their last three opponents, 104-3.

The Bears are getting nothing but better. Miami must entertain them next Monday, and will be trying furiously to end Chicago’s challenge to their 17-0 season of ’72. But beating this team is not going to be easy.

The Bears have been held under 20 points once in 12 games. They are beating opponents by an average of 20.2 points a game. They have 20 rushing touchdowns to their opponents’ three. They have held opponents to 40 second-half points for the season. They have gone 10 consecutive quarters without giving up a point and 14 quarters without giving up a touchdown.

They hit Atlanta with everything they had. The superstar, Payton, scored on a sideline-tightrope 40-yard dash, longest touchdown run of the season by a Bear. The supper star, William (The Refrigerator) Perry, scored his third touchdown of the season on a one-yard dive. And that was just the tip of the icebox.

Substitute running backs Calvin Thomas and Thomas Sanders also ran for touchdowns, and third-string tackle Henry Waechter sacked Falcon quarterback Bob Holly for a safety. With the Bears these days, everybody’s getting into the act.

Atlanta was thoroughly burned. Its two quarterbacks, Dave Archer and Holly, completed 3 of 17 passes for 16 yards, and the other Falcons were not much better.

“I think you pretty much could have gotten these guys to load their bus and leave in the second quarter,” Bear defensive end Dan Hampton said.

Steve Fuller, replacing the hurting Jim McMahon at quarterback for the third straight week, passed accurately before giving way in the fourth quarter to third-stringer Mike Tomczak. The rushing offense, meanwhile, was led by Payton’s 20 carries for 102 yards, and the defense was awesome, limiting Atlanta to 119 net yards.

“It’s scary how good we’re playing right now,” Payton said.

Defensive tackle Steve McMichael, asked what it would be like if the Bears did not make it to the Super Bowl after all this, said: “It would be a travesty. It would be the worst thing that ever happened.”

The second-worst thing would have been to be a Falcon when Refrigerator Perry came flying across the goal line.

Perry said he left his feet because the Dallas Cowboys last week tried to tackle him low, cutting his feet out from under him. So, he tried a dive, the likes of which has not been seen since Shelley Winters went swimming in “The Poseidon Adventure.”

Payton said he knew Jim Harris was watching the game from his hospital bed, and that he was certain he must have enjoyed what he was seeing.

“There are a lot more games we would like him to see us win,” Payton said.