Bears’ Perfect Season Crumbles in Miami Vise

Call Miami Homicide.

Somebody murdered the Bears.

After 12 wins in a row, Chicago was brought to Earth Monday night by the Miami Dolphins, the last team ever to go undefeated over an entire National Football League season (1972).

The 38-24 final score could have been a whole lot worse, because the Dolphins were leading, 31-10, at halftime. They could do very little wrong at the Orange Bowl before a crowd of 75,594 that included Sen. Ted Kennedy, singer Jimmy Buffett, Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” and an official no-show count of zero.

“We preserved the Dolphins’ record,” said Coach Don Shula, who guided Miami to its history-making 17-0 season. “That record is important to us, and we’d like to see it stand a long, long time.”

Coach Mike Ditka of the Bears said of his team: “Nobody’s invincible. Nobody’s perfect. I have only one wish. I hope they (the Dolphins) go as far as we’re going to go and we’ll play them again.”

This was a big game from an interest standpoint, if not from an importance standpoint. As much as anything, there existed a curiosity factor about the Bears, who do not play in these parts very often and do not usually bring 12-0 records with them anywhere. Just how good were these guys?

The Bears had given up only 29 points in their previous six games. For 13 quarters, they had not given up a touchdown. But their defense was shredded Monday by Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino’s three touchdown passes, and their offense could not keep pace, even with long-idle Jim McMahon trying to come to the rescue.

Chicago’s offensive line also took a pounding, Miami sacking the Bear quarterbacks six times.

Yet even though the Dolphin fans could stroll home on this 75-degree night saying, “We killed ‘em”--several fans threw a noose around a stuffed bear and dangled it in front of the press box--the loss in reality did no permanent damage to the Bears. They already have clinched their division as well as home-field advantage for the playoffs.

What the loss did do was convince the rest of the NFL that the Bears were, indeed, beatable. Many of the frozen Chicagoans who flew to Florida for this game seemed to believe that their heroes already had received their invitation to the Super Bowl. Teams like the Cowboys, 49ers, Giants and Rams know better.

Miami (9-4), meanwhile, needed this game to make sure its bid to return to the Super Bowl was not in jeopardy. The Dolphins have not clinched a playoff berth yet, but an 8-5 record would have dimmed their hopes considerably.

They were sure they could win. “We’ll beat the Bears,” wide receiver Mark Duper had guaranteed before the game. “I promise you, we’ll beat them.” And he set about doing so by catching five passes for 107 yards in the first half alone.

“I told you I wasn’t lying,” Duper said afterward.

The Bears were anything but scary in that first half. Miami scored on every possession. Not a thing the Bears did on defense worked. They gave up more points in four minutes than they had the last three weeks.

They went into prevent defenses on third-and-long. Marino still found an open man. They teed off on the quarterback as he released the ball. Marino still threw it perfectly.

First quarter, third and 18 -- Marino to Duper, 30 yards.

First quarter, third and 19 -- Marino to Nat Moore, 22 yards.

Second quarter, third and 13 -- Marino to Duper, 52 yards.

Second quarter, third and 7 -- Marino to Mark Clayton, 26 yards.

He passed for 188 yards in the first half alone. There were touchdown passes of 33 and 6 yards to Moore. There also were two touchdown runs of a yard each by backup fullback Ron Davenport -- whose eventual game totals read: Three carries, two yards.

What did the Bears do during this first half? Well, on paper, they did pretty well. Steve Fuller passed for 117 yards. Unfortunately, 69 of them came on a bomb to Willie Gault on their second possession.

Otherwise, Fuller was not impressive. He could not find receivers and could not scramble out of trouble. He personally snuffed a Chicago drive early in the third period by floating a pass into double coverage that Glenn Blackwood intercepted at the Miami 10.

Desperate in their search for offense, the Bears even tried a pass from Walter Payton to Fuller in the first half. Fuller had to make an excellent leaping effort, just to keep it from being intercepted.

For as long as he could, Ditka resisted the temptation to switch to the injured McMahon, who stood ready on the sidelines in Johnny Unitas-style, black hightop shoes (before changing into regular footwear at halftime). Fuller had started Chicago’s previous three games, in which the Bears outscored their opposition, 104-3.

Fuller was able to score his team’s first two touchdowns against Miami, both on one-yard sneaks. William (The Refrigerator) Perry waddled into the game on each of these occasions, but on quarterback dives, he was not really needed to block, much less run.

The second of these touchdowns came early in the second half, after Chicago’s Richard Dent recovered a Clayton fumble at the Dolphin 27. Fuller passed to Tim Wrightman, who dragged three tacklers just short of the goal line, and the Bears closed the gap to 31-17 -- with plenty of time left -- on Fuller’s sneak.

Then they got cute. Expecting to catch the Dolphins napping, the Bears tried a line-drive (“not on-side,” Ditka said) kick. Only, Kevin Butler was not supposed to line it right into Miami special-teamer Alex Moyer’s hands, which he did. But Moyers hung on to the football.

This decision really blew up in the Bears’ faces moments later, with the old Miami-to-Chicago-to-Miami touchdown play. From his own 42, Marino threw. Defensive end Dan Hampton tipped it. The ball kept going. Defensive back Mike Richardson looked up like a man seeing Halley’s Comet. The ball flew directly over his head into the hands of Clayton, who ran undisturbed to the end zone.

The Bears were reeling. They stood on the field and sidelines, pressing their palms to their helmets in disbelief.

Maybe they would have called it a night at that point, had not Dennis Gentry returned the next kickoff 50 yards. The Bears dug in again and got moving. Fuller finally fired one 19 yards to Ken Margerum for his first touchdown pass of the season--and Margerum’s first as well--to put Chicago within a couple of scores at 38-24. They got not closer.

The Dolphins scored only once in the second half and spent much of it on defense. Their crowd kept trying to help by drowning out Chicago’s signals, but repeated efforts by Shula and his players to quiet things only resulted in the fans mocking them by flapping their arms like birds.

The Bears had several chances to get back into the game. At one point, in his own territory, Marino fumbled, but Bear lineman Henry Waechter tried to scoop up the ball instead of falling on it, and missed it altogether. Miami recovered.

With 12:47 remaining in the game, Fuller twisted an ankle and McMahon went to work. The Bears drove to the Dolphin 16. But they ate up more than six minutes in doing so. Matt Suhey and McMahon then were thrown for losses until it was fourth and 34, at which point the Bears went for it and allowed their quarterback to be sacked again--for the sixth time.

This seemed to take the heart out of the Bears. With 1:16 to play, they handed the ball to Payton, who fumbled it away at the Miami 37 after a short gain. But why were they running at all? A touchdown pass at that point could have made it 38-31, with an onside kick to follow.

Speculation had them trying to get 100 yards for Payton. He gained six on the fumble play to to give him 100 yards for the night, and his eighth consecutive 100-yard game, breaking the record held by O.J. Simpson, Earl Campbell and himself. Meaningless runs in the final seconds brought Payton’s total to 121 yards for the night.

Ditka said he deserved the record. “Walter Payton is the greatest football player ever to play the game,” he said. “Other people who call themselves running backs can’t carry his jersey.”