Bears Favored to Shuffle Past Patriots Today : New England Beat Odds on Road to Super Bowl, Needs One More Upset

Mike Ditka summed up his week’s Super Bowl experience one day when he said: “Every so often I roll over in bed and pinch myself (and ask), ‘Do you realize where you’re at?’ ”

Coach, if you don’t know by now, heaven help you. It’s been in all the papers: the ungrammatical rhetoric, your quarterback’s sore derriere, analysis leading to paralysis.

Who can bear any more? There is nothing left to say, and so NBC will say it at 2:02 p.m. PST today, a few minutes before kickoff--which is scheduled for 2:16.15--with a blank minute of network television time, somewhat symbolic of the Chicago Bears’ defense.

Then those better-than-your-average Bears, 17-1 and champions of the NFC, will swagger out into the Superdome to meet New England’s starry-eyed Patriots, who are 14-5, had to play an extra game and travel nearly halfway around the world--12,000 air miles--to claw their way through the AFC as a wild-card team.

It looks like a mismatch, in style as well as strength. NFL Films is well into a $25,000 production of the Bears’ Super Bowl season. The Patriots don’t even have a video.

The boisterous Bears made Bourbon Street their personal playground, while the polite Patriots stayed in their rooms studying their playbooks, when they weren’t putting the media to sleep.

With the Bears, there was hardly a dull moment. While the Patriots were conducting their Christian Fellowship meetings, Jim McMahon, not necessarily the pride of Provo, gave another meaning to Super Bowl XX with his X-rated capers.

McMahon, full of himself all month, may be out of control in his sense of omnipotence. He beat Commissioner Pete Rozelle on the headbands and he beat Bear owner Mike McCaskey on the acupuncture issue, then offered his backside to helicopters and conventional standards of decorum.

The battle lines are clear. What’s at stake here are conservative, colonial ideals against the soul of every hard-hat who ever tipped a brew, not to forget the reputation of a Japanese acupuncturist and the fulfillment of Walter Payton’s career.

Payton, pro football’s all-time rushing leader, said he realized how much playing in the Super Bowl meant to him a year ago when his 10th season ended with a loss at San Francisco in the NFC title game.

“That was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with,” Payton said. “It took me 10 years to get that far, and I thought it might take me 10 more to get here. Nobody’s promised tomorrow.”

With all that, a big question is not whether the Patriots can win but whether they can score . Will they wind up as laid out as they are laid back?

The Bears set a National Football League record by shutting out their first two playoff opponents--the New York Giants, 20-0, and the Rams, 24-0--and are bent on posting the first Super Bowl shutout.

Three teams have been held without an offensive touchdown in the past 19 Super Bowls--Miami in VI, Washington in VII and Minnesota in IX--but none saw what Bear linebacker Otis Wilson said he sees for the Patriots: “A big goose egg.”

Later, he amended that to say: “I said if we play our game the way we can, there’s a possibility we can shut them out.”

Before the Bears played the Rams two weeks ago, Otis the oracle spoke of stuffing the unstoppable Eric Dickerson, so when Wilson talks, people are starting to listen.

Besides, Wilson said, “The Rams are a better football team (than the Patriots).”

When these teams met in the second game of the season 4 1/2 months ago, the Bears won, 20-7, but that was too long ago to be of much significance.

Mike Singletary, the Bears’ All-Pro middle linebacker, said: “I’ve looked at that game once and I don’t think I’m gonna look at it again, because the team is so much different now.”

Besides, the Patriots in the playoffs have reversed three of their regular-season defeats, beating the Raiders, New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.

Neither team has played in a Super Bowl, nor even in a championship game since 1963, but their coaches have tasted titles. That year the Bears, with Ditka playing tight end, defeated the Giants for the NFL title, 14-10, and the Patriots lost the AFL crown to the San Diego Chargers, 51-10.

Five years earlier, Patriot Coach Raymond Berry played in the Baltimore Colts’ 23-17 overtime win against the Giants. He caught 12 passes from John Unitas for 178 yards--NFL playoff records that endure.

He could use Unitas today. He must find a way to penetrate the league’s toughest defense with a third-year quarterback, Tony Eason, who has been ill the last two days and has never played a complete NFL season.

Eason, dressed in jeans and a warmup jacket, still had what was described as “chest congestion” but threw passes for about 20 minutes of the Patriots’ light, 55-minute practice in the Superdome Saturday, although the veteran Steve Grogan ran the offense for the second day in a row.

“It seems like Tony was better,” Berry said, “but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

After the Patriots started 2-3, Eason separated a shoulder in the sixth game against Buffalo and Grogan came in to pull out a 14-3 victory that launched a six-game winning streak.

Then, in the 12th game against the Jets, Grogan broke a leg. Eason relieved him and played well, but the Jets won in overtime, 16-13. Grogan is well enough to play again, but Berry is sticking with Eason.

Singletary said that Eason has matured since their first encounter.

“You can look at him on film and see that he’s gained so much confidence in what he’s doing,” Singletary said. “He scrambles when he has to. He gets rid of the ball when he has to. He doesn’t get sacked as often.”

Berry said: “The last five or six weeks, he’s operated our offense flawlessly.”

But it’s been the kind of offense the Bears eat for lunch. In their three playoff victories, the Patriots have used 147 running plays and only 42 passes. What Berry likes about it is that Eason hasn’t thrown an interception in the playoffs, while relying on Craig James and Tony Collins to slug out ball control yardage.

But Berry seems to realize he’ll have to balance his offense better than that so the Bears won’t be able to focus their defense on any particular strength.

“A team that goes into a big game without balance doesn’t have much of a chance,” he said.

Nobody has been able to play traditional ball control against the Bears, but at least one expert said that the Patriots could and should neutralize Chicago’s ferocious pass rush by throwing the offensive throttles open.

“I’d throw the bomb on the game’s first play,” Dan Fouts wrote as a guest columnist in USA Today. “If that didn’t work, I’d come right back and throw another one.”

The Charger quarterback pointed to the Bears’ only defeat as an example that if the Bears can’t stop the bomb, they’ll drop back into more predictable zone coverages. “Dan Marino showed (that) the long pass can work against Chicago, (and) I’m sure Berry has taken a page from Miami’s playbook and will roll out Eason,” he wrote.

Fouts added: “If the Patriots have any chance, Grogan has to play.”

Berry hinted that he agrees with Fouts on the scheme, if not the man. He studied Eason’s college films on a visit to Illinois last spring.

“I saw him rolling left and rolling right, which I’d never seen him do,” Berry said. “I came away with a much better grasp of him operating in a wide-open passing game.”

But that hardly means that the Patriots plan to change their offense for this game.

Berry said: “Some of the things Miami did, we can’t do. All you can do is look on in admiration. You’re talking about a scheme that took years to put in. You can’t do it in a week.”

Rod Humenuik, Berry’s assistant coach on offense, said: “We’ve been lighting candles and shaking the beads. When you see what the Bears did to the Giants and Rams--wow! When they get up on you by seven points--or even three--watch out, because they consider that a big lead and they’re coming.

“But, realistically, can we come into this game with a new system? I’ll be extremely candid: no.”

Variations of the Bears’ 46 defense devised by Buddy Ryan will present most of the Patriots’ difficulty--that, and the Bears’ attitude about defense.

Ditka said: “We try to do what we want to do and see if they can stop it.”

Keep in mind that he’s talking about defense, not offense.

“If you’ve got an eight-man front, there’s one guy there that you can’t block,” John Hannah, the Patriots’ All-Pro guard, said. “They’ve outnumbered you. A lot of teams have a similar scheme, but they keep that defensive back back there for the passing game.”

Can the Patriots hold them off?

“If we didn’t think we could, we might as well go home, hadn’t we?” Hannah said.

Perhaps the best case to be made for the Patriots is their recent trend toward opportunism. The Bears led the league with a plus-23 in turnovers, but the Patriots, gobbling up nine fumbles and seven interceptions, have been plus-12 in their three playoff games.

Defensively, the Patriots seem capable of handling the Bears’ seventh-ranked offense, especially if McMahon’s bruised backside restrict his rollouts and scrambles.

Rod Rust, the Patriots’ defensive coordinator, said: “We aren’t operating on any assumption that his mobility will be affected. We played Washington last season when (John) Riggins was supposed to have a sore back, and he killed us.”

And McMahon isn’t about to let anything deprive him of his Super Sunday. More than anybody, he knows where he’s at.

Super Bowl Notes Each member of the winning team will collect $36,000, each loser $18,000. The Patriots, who played the extra wild-card game, have already earned $34,000, and the Bears $28,000. . . . Six of the seven game officials, among them referee Red Cashion, will be working the Super Bowl for the first time. The only repeater is side judge Bob Rice, who worked Super Bowl XVI at Pontiac, Mich. The officials were hand-picked from those who worked the playoffs, who were hand-picked from the regular-season crews. . . . Neither team has a disabling injury. Jim McMahon, whose back and buttocks were severely bruised when Ram linebacker Jim Collins hit him in the NFC title game two weeks ago, is the Bears’ only concern. Punter Kevin Butler (flu) and wide receiver Dennis McKinnon (hip pointer) both returned for the club’s 30-minute drill Saturday and will start. . . . Irving Fryar, who missed the Patriots’ AFC title win at Miami because of a cut finger, will return punts, but Stephen Starring will start in his place at wide receiver. Punter Rich Camarillo (back spasms) kicked Saturday for the first time in three days. . . . Nine Bears are scheduled to play for the NFC in next Sunday’s Pro Bowl at Honolulu. Voted in by their peers were offensive tackle Jim Covert, center Jay Hilgenberg, running back Walter Payton, defensive ends Richard Dent and Dan Hampton, linebackers Mike Singletary and Otis Wilson, and safety Dave Duerson. McMahon was added as an alternate when the 49ers’ Joe Montana withdrew with an injury. . . . Seven Patriots were picked for the AFC squad: Fryar, guard John Hannah, offensive tackle Brian Holloway, running back Craig James, linebackers Steve Nelson and Andre Tippett and cornerback Raymond Clayborn.