CHICAGO BEARS vs. NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS : The Story of Singletary and the Three Bears : In Ryan’s 46 Defense, the Star Linebacker Is Hard Enough to Find, Let Alone Block

The last time the Chicago Bears played football, in the NFC title game, Eric Dickerson collided with Chicago’s middle linebacker, Mike Singletary, on a third-and-inches play. The Ram running back was advancing into what seemed like an adequate hole when Singletary met him. End of advance.

The stop was typical of the way the Bears plan to stop the New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl, which matches two of the NFL’s most physical teams.

Movies of the Singletary-Dickerson impact show that no Ram blocked the smallish Bear linebacker, who had begun the play hiding behind 308-pound defensive tackle William Perry.

Ram blocking back Mike Guman led Dickerson into the hole but could find nobody to hit. He wound up helping Ram guard Kent Hill double-team Perry, though Hill didn’t need the help.

Just then, as Dickerson cruised forward, Singletary jumped out and said gotcha .

A powerful runner, Dickerson at 218 pounds is almost as big as Singletary, 228. As the ballcarrier, he also had the momentum. But he didn’t move an inch after Singletary hit him.

It was a classic physics test. Singletary, who stands 5 feet 11 inches or less, had the leverage on the 6-3 Dickerson.

In fact, Singletary has the leverage on nearly all opponents. He’s shorter, smarter and more active than most. At age 26, five years out of Baylor, Singletary is possibly the shortest, smartest and most active linebacker of all time.

The Bears, therefore, have built their defense around Singletary, and their defense is the story of this game. It’s the reason they’re favored by 10 points. They can win Super Bowl XX without much help from their offense if their defensive players are as successful as they’ve been so far in a 17-1 season.

Their defense could be called Ryan’s Baby. It was devised by Buddy Ryan, the Chicago defensive coordinator who was handpicked by the Bears’ late founder, George Halas, before Halas brought in Mike Ditka as head coach in 1982 with orders to let Ryan run the defense.

Under Ryan, the club’s defensive strategy and tactics are unique. There has never been a defense like this one, although it is constructed on the philosophy of the late Clark Shaughnessy, a former Bear defensive coach who said: “Confuse them on every play.”

This Ryan does with more than 90 different defensive alignments.

“Buddy almost always puts us in the right one for the right play,” Bear defensive tackle Steve McMichael said. “It’s really weird the way he does it.”

A roly-poly, down-country Oklahoman, Ryan, who addresses his players by number instead of name, calls his basic defense the 46, which was the uniform number of a former Bear, Doug Plank.

Amazingly, linebackers Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall line up hip to hip in the 46 on the strong side of the line of scrimmage. Safety Dave Duerson comes up on the other side, and Singletary packs in to make it virtually an eight-man line.

At right defensive end, Richard Dent, the only extraordinarily gifted player in the lineup aside from Singletary and, potentially, aside from Marshall and Perry, has a free-lance role. He usually rushes the passer.

There are three other down linemen in the 46. These are Perry, McMichael and Dan Hampton, who, with Hampton in the middle, are coached to smother the offensive team’s guards and center.

Ryan says, vaguely, that his goal is to take the guards out of the offense--that is, to keep them from pulling. He doesn’t talk in detail about his mysterious defense, which on paper won’t work. But most likely, his real objective is to keep the offense from blocking Singletary.

As he did in the Dickerson play, Singletary often hides behind one of the bigger Bears until the run develops. Then, suddenly, as his teammates hold up the others in the offense, he appears in time to make the tackle.

This is most obvious when the offensive team runs to the weak side of the line, where, ostensibly, the only Bears on hand are Duerson, a 203-pound safety, and Dent, who doesn’t play the run as vigorously or as well as he goes after quarterbacks.

Theoretically, Dent and Duerson can be run down, but the agile Singletary always seems to get over there to support them in time.

On the strong side, as a rule, nothing is open. In the 46, astonishingly, all three Bear linebackers line up outside the offensive team’s strong-side guard.

And on most plays, one or more of the linebackers blitzes the passer as the overloaded offense tries to anticipate who’s coming and who isn’t.

“We blitz sometimes even when we shouldn’t,” Ryan said. “There’s nothing like a blitzing linebacker to build up the defensive team’s confidence and destroy the offense’s confidence. Football is a game of morale. That’s why we blitz so much.”

In principle, Ryan’s defense is the NFL’s most interesting example of fitting a system to the players available. Whereas the Raiders and other winners look for the kind of talent that will fit their particular style, Ryan accepts what’s there and makes the most of it.

McMichael, Dent and Singletary provide three examples.

McMichael is a New England castoff who was brought to Chicago as a candidate for offensive guard. When that didn’t work out, Ryan made a home for him at defensive tackle.

Big Play Dent was the 203rd player chosen in the 1983 draft, where he was ignored until the eighth round. A tennis player at Tennessee State, where he also played football, Dent is second only to Singletary in value to the Bears, although Dickerson, for example, could have run on him all day. He could have, that is, if Dent had stood in and played him like a man. Assigned another role, Dent amusingly watched Singletary make the tackles.

A second-round Chicago choice in 1981, Singletary couldn’t have been drafted by the Raiders, Dolphins or most other NFL teams. His height is listed at 6-0, but he isn’t within an inch of that. He is at least three inches too short to be a short NFL linebacker. The Raiders and all other teams deeply respected his talent when he was at Baylor, but no self-respecting general manager would take a little guy like that on the first round.

A friendly, smiling individual like William Perry, Singletary appears to have been born without a neck. His smiling face sits on top of a chest that is possibly a yard wide.

He might be compared to a ballet dancer who hits like Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke, the two who converted the NFC Central into the black and blue division. It took Ryan only a year or so to make Singletary the Bear defense. The others on the team are mainly a male chorus line.

The textbook way to beat the Bear defense is, of course, to throw quick short passes. The single-covering Chicago cornerbacks, Mike Richardson and Leslie Frazier, usually play bump and run, and the only other defensive back in the secondary is a slow, old safety from Yale, Gary Fencik.

In 18 games, though, only Miami’s Dan Marino has thrown fast enough--with blitzing linebackers Dent and Wilson chasing him--to win.

The Patriots, however, think they can also run on Chicago behind three of the NFL’s most punishing blockers--John Hannah and tackles Brian Holloway and Steve Moore.

Against the 46 defense, Hannah, as a guard, is supposed to stand there Sunday and take it from one or another of the three Bears--Perry, Hampton and McMichael--whose main job is to smother guards.

That is something to watch for.

And so, as a unit, is the Bear defense. You’ve never been anything like it.

Wednesday: The New England offense.