The First Game Was No Contest : Patriots Were Simply Patsies for Bears Earlier This Season

The Chicago Bears, never famous for their philanthropy, are paying defensive end Richard Dent $90,000 to play football this season.

In an era of overpaid athletes, that’s about $400,000 under his market value.

Thus he threatened, for a while, to boycott next Sunday’s football game at New Orleans, where the Bears will be playing the New England Patriots in the 20th Super Bowl.

But this has been an All-Pro season for Dent. He has decided to play because, in the championship game, he wants to go out the way he came in.

The championship game will be a rematch. At Chicago’s Soldier Field four months ago, the Bears beat the Patriots, 20-7. And in a memorable performance that afternoon, Dent made two successive big plays at a distance of precisely 40 yards apart:

--On second down, storming in from his position at right end, he sacked Tony Eason, the young New England quarterback.

--On third down, playing in the Chicago pass defense despite his bulk, 6 feet 5 inches and 263 pounds, Dent intercepted a pass by Eason 34 yards down the field.

This improbable parlay illustrated the versatility of the strange Bear defense, which sacked Eason six times, intercepted three of his passes, and held New England scoreless for three quarters.

The Patriots, in a word, were outclassed that week, leaving two questions for this week:

--Can they make the rematch closer?

--What light does the first Bear-Patriot game shed on the second?

Most football people say that if the Patriots play the same way, they’ll lose again to Dent and his companions, but that they aren’t likely to do the same things because this is basically a different New England club.

In the last four months, the Patriots have evolved from a collection of gifted but mistake-prone losers into a strong ballclub.

The Bears, by contrast, have played their same kind of football for a couple of years, with virtually the same lineup, the big exception being The Refrigerator, William Perry.

By last Sept. 15, when they blanked New England into the fourth quarter of the year’s second regular-season game, 20-0, the Bears had jelled into a club that even then seemed capable of a 15-1 season.

In Coach Buddy Ryan’s extraordinary Bear defense, Dent, linebacker Mike Singletary and the others could and did make one unusual big play after another.

The Patriots, however, didn’t yet have their act together. That first time against Chicago, they were incapable of sound football. Items:

--They went on to lose three of their first five games, beating only Buffalo and Green Bay.

--New England’s All-Pro guard John Hannah and several other offensive linemen missed September’s Chicago game with injuries.

--Eason, in his third year out of Illinois, was just learning his third pro offense under the third offensive coordinator he’d had at New England.

--Craig James, who gained 1,227 yards for the Patriots this season, was just starting his first full year at running back for a team that hadn’t yet developed either the philosophy or mechanics of its present ball-control ground game. The Patriots ran only 16 times at Chicago for only 27 yards, James gaining five yards in seven carries.

--With Coach Raymond Berry as one of the few holdovers at New England, a new staff was putting in a new system that didn’t begin paying off for another month, when the Patriots finally launched the six-week winning streak that got them to the playoffs.

In short, in the second week of the season, New England wasn’t ready for the Bears.

During Dick Steinberg’s six years as director of player development, the Patriots had recruited a team that could match the Bears in talent. But before Berry, the coaching wasn’t there, and it took Berry a spell.

In the first Bear-Patriot game, the Bears dominated from the start, moving to a touchdown from the opening kickoff.

After wide receiver Dennis McKinnon had caught quarterback Jim McMahon’s pass on a 32-yard scoring play, the Bears added a field goal for a 10-0 lead at the half.

Dent’s interception and wide receiver Willie Gault’s only catch of the day, followed by fullback Matt Suhey’s one-yard run, extended the lead to 17-0 in the third quarter, after which Kevin Butler kicked another field goal.

When the Bear defense continued to go after the New England passer with eight or nine men in the final 15 minutes, instead of sitting on a 20-0 lead, Eason surprised them with a screen pass. He flicked the ball out to a wide-open James, who sprinted 80 yards to the only touchdown of the fourth quarter.

The Patriots weren’t proud of their performance at Soldier Field. Aside from their touchdown play, they gained only 126 yards in total offense, most on throws by Eason, who completed 15 of 35 for 234 yards. That was two yards more than the Bears could produce with 15 completions in 23 attempts by three passers, McMahon, Steve Fuller and Walter Payton.

Payton also carried 9 times but for only 39 yards. Not until after the New England game did Payton begin stringing together nine consecutive 100-yard games.

Both Payton and McMahon left the field with injuries, although the Patriots did not knock out McMahon. He had hurt his back the night before, he said, rolling over in bed.

McMahon didn’t return to football until the second half of the next game, when, rescuing Fuller, he erupted with the NFL’s most spectacular offensive performance of the season.

In a Monday night game at Minnesota, McMahon completed his first two passes--both long passes--for touchdowns, and threw another scoring pass in the third quarter, on his seventh throw. That brought the Bears from behind as they beat the Vikings, 33-24.

In those early weeks of the season, Bear Coach Ditka wasn’t showing a great deal of respect for McMahon, who had missed much of last season with an injury and who had seldom triggered offensive explosions for the Bears anytime anywhere.

“The offense has been like a sleeping baby,” Bear defensive end Dan Hampton told the Chicago writers after the New England game. “We’re trying to wake it up. We’re trying to snatch it out of the cradle and see if it can walk.”

Against New England, despairing of McMahon’s abilities, Ditka had called a flea-flicker pass, a tackle-eligible pass, a halfback pass by Payton and a flanker reverse.

None gained a yard, and the flea-flicker was intercepted.

It wasn’t McMahon and it wasn’t Ditka’s tricks that beat New England. It was Chicago’s defense and New England’s problems.

Not the least of those problems was the Patriots’ torn-up offensive line.

In the Super Bowl, their blockers are expected to be a major strength for the Patriots, who deploy two Pro Bowl types hip to hip on the left side--John Hannah and Brian Holloway--plus an excellent young 300-pound right tackle, Steve Moore.

In the first Bear-Patriot game, though, the offensive line was more liability than strength:

--Moore had become a starter only the week before.

--When Hannah was scratched with a torn calf muscle, the Patriots lined up third-string center Guy Morriss at left guard.

--Rookie Paul Fairchild replaced injured Ron Wooten at right guard.

--At center, Pete Brock, 31, played on a bad knee.

Nothing is more important to offensive football than a cohesive offensive line whose starters are used to working together. The Patriots didn’t have that at Chicago.

Nor did they have a mature, cohesive coaching staff.

Berry, who took over at New England last season with the schedule half finished, decided at the time to stay with his predecessor’s staff and shake it up only at the end of the season.

That made sense in 1984, when the Patriots needed as much leadership continuity as possible to bid for the playoffs. But as 1985 started, Berry and his new people were still trying to find themselves.

Berry had nine new assistants, altogether, including the entire offensive staff.

It is a widely believed NFL theory that communication difficulties alone pose an all but insurmountable first-year problem for new coaches. Coming in from various kinds of NFL franchises is like coming in from foreign countries.

Football is simpler for veteran staffs. For example, veteran coaches such as Don Shula’s at Miami can decide on the spot, after the kickoff, to adjust to a new plan. They can relate to game plans they worked out together in other years and, using familiar code words, they can extract plays and formations they’re all familiar with.

By contrast, a new regime is practically coaching blind.

It has been said that in NFL competition, new coaches lose four or five games the first year on communication problems alone.

Berry’s achievement this season in eventually guiding a new staff into the playoffs is enough to qualify him for coach of the year. But clearly, as of the second game of the season, he and his team weren’t ready for the Bears.

They weren’t ready for a sack artist, Richard Dent, and a linebacker, Mike Singletary, who play pass defense as if they were cornerbacks.

They weren’t ready for a seasoned defensive team that attacks with possibly the most complicated defensive arrangement ever devised.

The rematch may be different. The Patriots think they’ll be ready.