The Bears Have Drafted Just Like They Often Play--Recklessly

As far as the outside world knows, no fistfights ever broke out in a National Football League team’s headquarters on draft day.

Has anyone checked with the Chicago Bears?

Last spring, their scouting department decided to select defensive tackle William (The Refrigerator) Perry of Clemson in the first round of the NFL draft.

Their coaching staff, particularly defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, was aghast. No one told them Perry was going to be the pick.

This was no oversight. It was by design, by Bear design, which is to say, a football stencil cut out with a meat cleaver.

The Perry decision was the Bears’ heavy-handed way of putting one of the finishing touches on their 1985 roster, a list that includes only 15 of the names it did five years ago.

“We don’t involve the assistant coaches in our drafts,” General Manager Jerry Vainisi said recently. “That’s becoming more and more unusual, I know, but it cuts down on the number of people making decisions.”

So Ryan called Perry a “wasted draft pick”? So Ryan said: “He’s a nice kid, but so’s my son, and I wouldn’t want him playing for me”? So what, says Vainisi.

“It didn’t embarrass us. It aggravated me, but that’s Ryan’s style. Ryan said he wanted a cornerback. If Ryan doesn’t get his way, he complains. He’s been wanting a cornerback for seven years or something like that, and when he doesn’t get one, he’ll knock the draft choice,” Vainisi said.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing about the Bears is they built their team the way they play football: Recklessly.

With opportune draft picks, a smattering of free agents and a trade here and there, the Bears very quickly molded the team that has become the favorite for today’s Super Bowl XX.

Although their biggest star, running back Walter Payton, arrived 11 years ago, the philosophy swept in four years ago this week, when Mike Ditka was named head coach.

“I wanted people who wanted to do more than be first in line Tuesday for their paycheck,” Ditka said. “I wanted people who would play hard on Sunday. It was simple, really.”

The Bears became so uncomplicated. They cut hordes of mediocre players, and replaced them with better ones. Now, although they have played .500 or better only the last three seasons, 24 of their 45 players have not played on a losing Bears team.

“They don’t remember the blocked punts by Minnesota or the fumbles against Green Bay,” said free safety Gary Fencik, a 10-year veteran who does. “More than half this team has never played for a loser here.”

Vainisi, who had been with the Chicago front office for 11 years before becoming general manager in 1983, said many players on the old Bears “had accepted losing.”

And Ditka, of all people, wouldn’t accept that.

Around draft time, most teams run circles around the “best available athlete” phrase. But, in Ditka’s first year, the Bears targeted positions and stuck to them.

“We drafted by positions those first couple years especially,” Ditka said. “We were so poor in some areas, we had to do it.”

Ditka’s first priority was quarterback, which came as no surprise after solemn seasons filled with the misfires of Bobby Douglass, Jack Concannon, Bob Avellini and friends.

Ditka and his scouts did well. With the fifth choice in the 1982 draft, they picked Jim McMahon.