The Weather Was Bearable but Too Cold for Jets, 19-6

A piercing wind on a cold day takes the life out of football teams. And, in pale sunshine, there were gusts up to 35 m.p.h. Saturday as the New Jersey temperature dropped below freezing.

This kept both teams from concentrating on football, for the most part, and all but ruined a game that the Chicago Bears won from the New York Jets with one touchdown and four field goals, 19-6.

“The wind played right into our hands,” said Chicago safety Dave Duerson, indicating that the Bears feared Jet quarterback Ken O’Brien’s passes more than halfback Freeman McNeil’s runs. “New York was forced to run the ball, and nobody can beat us running.”

Chicago quarterback Jim McMahon’s seven-yard scoring pass to tight end Tim Wrightman, ending a 12-play, 80-yard surge with the wind in the second quarter, was the shot that beat the Jets, severely damaging their chances for this season’s AFC title.

The Jets (10-5) can make the playoffs with a win over Cleveland when the regular season ends next weekend. In fact, they could still win the division with a couple of breaks. But they’re hurting now, and they looked it.

The Bears (14-1), who have already won the NFC Central title and the home-field advantage in the playoffs, were playing for pride in this game and showed the most of it.

“It was nice to beat them when they had more to play for than we did,” McMahon said. “I think we got our momentum going (for the playoffs) today. It’s about time.”

Mike Ditka, his coach, said: “Their defense hurt our offense more than the weather.”

But most of Ditka’s players agreed that the wind made the big difference.

Chicago linebacker Otis Wilson said: “It was Chicago weather--the same exact thing we’re going to have (during the playoffs). It hurt them a lot. It didn’t bother us that much.”

Defensive football is easier to play than offense on a brutal-weather day, and in any case these are both defensive teams. As a rule, the defenses took charge here when they had to in this wind, the Jets holding Walter Payton to 53 yards and ending his streak of 100-yard games at an NFL-record nine.

The Bears meanwhile held McNeil to 63 yards and sacked O’Brien four times.

McMahon, who was sacked five times, has apparently finally learned to run out of bounds when scrambling--as Ditka has been requesting.

The former BYU quarterback didn’t take on a tackler in this game, preferring the sidelines or a slide instead on five scrambles.

It was a matchup of placekickers much of the way, Chicago’s Kevin Butler and New York’s Pat Leahy trading field goals in a 3-3 first quarter and adding a field goal apiece in the third quarter. The Bears took 13-6 lead into the last period on the strength of the afternoon’s lone touchdown.

When the Jets had to move into the wind in the fourth quarter, they were through. A short New York punt and an aborted fourth-down play gave Butler the opportunity to add two field goals in the last 15 minutes.

Thus McMahon and the Bears won it with the game’s one six-point play, which followed a balanced assault of passes by McMahon and runs by Payton good for 80 sustained yards.

Wrightman is a powerful 6-3, 237-pound tight end, and after catching the ball at the 4-yard line he bulled into the end zone with first one, then two and finally three Jets clutching him.

“The wind was the worst I’ve ever seen at a football game,” field judge Chuck McCallum said at the airport afterward. “It was really tossing the ball around.”

McCallum said also that on the most controversial play of the afternoon, he thought Jet safety Kirk Springs intercepted McMahon’s longest pass of the second quarter.

Another official, closer to the action, ruled it an incomplete.

The significance of this play was that the Bears kept possession thereafter until they had marched to the touchdown that won the game.

“It looked like he (Springs) had the ball,” Jet Coach Joe Walton said. “I understand the instant replay showed he intercepted.”

CBS broadcaster Pat Summerall, talking about it on a flight to Dallas, said: “After looking at four replays, I’d say it was an interception.”

Assuming the play was as close as that, it was hardly a bad call.

Except for the Chicago scoring drive that followed the non-interception, this was basically an even game.

Focusing on the four platoons that fought it out, this can be said:

--The Jet defense stopped the Bears on almost every clutch play, largely because of the talent of nose tackle Joe Klecko and defensive end Mark Gastineau.

A former tackle in the Jets’ former 4-3 defense, Klecko took a cocked stance on most plays in the middle of his team’s defensive line, playing opposite a Bear guard and frequently charging into Bear center Jay Hilgenberg.

He took both Hilgenberg and a guard out of most plays, closing down the middle to Payton. When New York’s linebackers closed down the outside, an easier task, Payton had no place to run.

“Klecko was born to be a nose tackle,” said the Jets’ defensive coordinator, Bud Carson, who put him in the middle when he took over the Jet defense this year.

--The Bear offense again raised an urgent question. Are these folks good enough to win a Super Bowl?

Although fullback Matt Suhey is showing some improvement, Chicago’s blockers frequently couldn’t get Payton to the line of scrimmage.

Moreover, Chicago wide receivers Willie Gault and Dennis McKinnon have become largely ineffective as a pair now that McKinnon can’t hold the ball.

Which leaves only McMahon as a reliable offensive threat for the Bears.

McMahon is an active, hard-to-rush scrapper who sees well downfield and throws accurately when off balance. But against a defense as good as New York’s, McMahon can’t do it alone.

The best Bear play, a 65-yard pass play, McMahon to Payton, was illegal--probably deliberately illegal. McKinnon picked off the Jet assigned to Payton on that pass, linebacker Lance Mehl.

--The Jet offense has been powerful against many defenses this year but couldn’t penetrate the Bears.

O’Brien is possibly the slowest-moving quarterback in the league. Although he throws a good pass and reads reliably, O’Brien, 6-4, 208, tends to resemble a giant stuck in a molasses field or a man running under water. The wet field didn’t help. It had been unprotected during Friday’s rain.

The best Jet ballcarrier, McNeil, has the moves of some of the finest running backs ever, but he doesn’t get enough blocking to harm a team as able as Chicago’s.

--The Bear defense has ceased to intimidate, for the time being, although it’s still one of the league’s most successful.

Since Miami’s Dan Marino cut up the Bears with short passes, they’ve cut their blitzing in half.

The toughest Bears in this game were defensive end Richad Dent and linebacker Mike Singletary, particularly Dent, who twice sacked O’Brien into the fumbles that gave Chicago two chances in the third quarter at the New York 30 and 25.

Despite the fact that, against the wind, the Bears couldn’t capitalize either time, Ditka thought the sack-fumbles both served his purpose.

“Just taking the ball away from them when they had the wind was very important to us,” he said.

Everybody talked about the wind.

Asked if the Jets were a little tight against the NFL’s top team, Singletary said: “They weren’t so much tight as bothered by the weather.”

Said Chicago tackle Steve McMichael: “It’s only cold when you lose. This was Bear weather.”