PRO FOOTBALL ’86 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : From Touchdowns To Turmoil : Outrageousness Is Their Motto; It May Even Be a Bear Necessity

Outrageousness?

The Bears?

Why?

Just because the team’s beer-chugging, motorcycle-riding, sunglasses-wearing quarterback hates the guts of the team president, George Halas’ grandson, claiming that most of the players “just laugh to keep from strangling him?”

Just because the team’s coach accuses the quarterback of pouting over minor details and putting on weight, whereupon the quarterback says the coach is “full of (what real bears do in the woods).”?

Just because the team’s defensive coordinator gets carried off on the players’ shoulders after Super Bowl XX, then submits his resignation and calls the head coach a jerk?

Just because the team’s big, big, big star of last season weighs a sixth of a ton, has three touchdowns under his boa constrictor-length belt, and now wants to run back kickoffs?

Just because the team’s superstar running back arrives at training camp by helicopter?

Just because a team with a superstar running back uses its first-round draft pick on a running back?

Just because the most valuable player of the Super Bowl complains that he doesn’t get the publicity the other guys do?

Just because the coach accuses this particular player and two fellow Pro Bowl players of general laziness and “taking the preseason off.”?

Just because the team’s leading tackler of 1985 was a 190-pound Yale man who used the off-season to get his master’s degree from Northwestern, and just because the team’s second-leading tackler wears eyeglasses off the field and says his favorite book is one by Norman Vincent Peale?

Just because four of the team’s players used their spare time before an exhibition game in England to go to Abbey Road and re-create a Beatles album cover?

Just because the mayor of Chicago is at odds with the president of the Bears, and cannot even pronounce his name?

Outrageousness?

The Bears?

OK, so these guys are a little off the wall.

OK, so defensive tackle Steve McMichael’s hobby is rattlesnake hunting.

OK, so wide receiver Ken Margerum wears black, Johnny Unitas high-tops.

OK, so linebacker Wilber Marshall’s middle name is Buddyhia.

OK, so the 1986 National Football League champions introduced to Super Bowl folklore the following: Headbands, acupuncture, rock videos, mooning in the Crescent City, the 46 defense, the world’s fattest passer, and the game’s most lopsided score in two decades, a 46-10 slaughter of the New England Patriots at the New Orleans Superdome, before a crowd that included Mr. T dressed in a golden helmet and a Walter Payton football jersey.

Oh, those Bears. What a good, goofy team they were. They played 19 games and won 18 of them, losing only on a Monday night at Miami. They won their playoff games against the Giants, Rams and Patriots by a combined score of 91-10. They scored more points in the Super Bowl than any other team, and held New England to seven yards rushing.

Nine defensive players scored points during the season, and there were three touchdowns rushing by the man with the golden gut, William (Refrigerator) Perry. When the defense wasn’t scoring, it was, remarkably, limiting 14 opponents to 10 points or fewer. Only three teams--Tampa Bay in the season opener, Minnesota two weeks later and Miami in that Monday night game--scored as many as 20 against the 1985 Bears.

The Bears even did it without two of their 1984 defensive starters, safety Todd Bell and linebacker Al Harris, both of whom sat out the season in contract disputes. Both men have returned this season, which bodes ill for opponents.

So does the fact that the Bears, having played a nasty schedule a year ago, with road games at Dallas, San Francisco, Miami, the New York Jets and Detroit, have only two opponents on their 1986 schedule--the Cowboys and Rams--who had winning seasons a year ago.

“We could be even better this time around,” said safety Gary Fencik, the 32-year-old Yalie who led the Super Bowl champions in tackles.

The Bears figure opponents will be ready to try anything to stop them this time, including intimidation. When the St. Louis Cardinals came to Soldier Field for an exhibition game Aug. 23, it was a good fight until an occasional football game broke out.

No angels, the Bears precipitated much of the brawling, Perry body-slamming Cardinal quarterback Neil Lomax and Marshall slapping Cardinal offensive tackle Luis Sharpe. The visitors retaliated with a vengeance, even kicking Bears while they were down.

“The Bears are not a dirty football team,” said Mike Singletary, the bespectacled, studious linebacker who subscribes to Peale’s positive-thinking ideals. “I think a lot of teams think we are, but we’re not. We’re not the Oakland Raiders of old. We’re the Bears. We’re unique.

“And if teams do try to intimidate us this season, well, I think they’re making a big mistake. They’re fooling with the wrong team if they try that stuff.”

The Bears have to be tough, just to survive one another. Ask Singletary, who was met head-on at the Super Bowl by a westbound Refrigerator, getting knocked cold for a few minutes. Hard-headedness is a Bear necessity, since some of these guys, quarterback Jim McMahon included, celebrate good plays not with high-fives, but by butting helmets.

Chicago has a mean team, a tough coach and a hard act to follow. Although it seems that 1985 was the franchise’s first good season in a while, the Bears actually have won 17 of their last 18 games against NFC Central opponents, have won 19 of their last 21 games at Soldier Field, and, since Mike Ditka took over as coach in 1982, have a record of 33-4 when leading after three quarters.

They have won eight straight at home against AFC teams, a streak the Cleveland Browns will try to end in Sunday’s season opener.

How did the Bears get to be so good? For one thing, nine regulars on their Super Bowl squad were first-round draft picks--some of them, including Payton, Dan Hampton and McMahon, picked by General Manager Jim Finks, who resigned, presumably at George Halas’ request, in 1983.

McMahon has meant as much to the Bears as any player can. Since the first-string job was given to him in 1983, before a game with the Rams, McMahon has been practically unbeatable. Since losing to the Rams, McMahon has won 26 of his last 29 starts.

Only injuries have slowed McMahon. A torn kidney, suffered in a 1984 game against the Raiders, and a broken hand kept him out of seven games, including the NFC title game at San Francisco. Shoulder tendinitis forced him out for three weeks in 1985, including the loss at Miami. A stiff neck kept him from starting a Thursday night game at Minnesota, but McMahon talked Ditka into using him in the second half and threw his first two passes for touchdowns.

McMahon and Ditka have not talked much since. When McMahon reported to the Bears’ training camp at Platteville, Wis., 10 to 15 pounds overweight, Ditka told reporters that McMahon resembled Sonny Jurgensen, fined him $1,000 and accused him of pouting over any sort of criticism. “Why does he say I’m pouting? Because I don’t kiss his (bleep)?” replied McMahon. “He’s full of (bleep). He says a lot of things nobody really cares about.”

This was nothing compared to comments about club president Michael McCaskey he made in “McMahon,” the quarterback’s just-published biography. “(He) doesn’t have any qualifications to operate the Bears except his name,” McMahon is quoted for openers, a reference to McCaskey’s grandfather, Papa Bear Halas, whose initials are embroidered on the players’ sleeves.

McMahon mocks McCaskey’s participation in the Super Bowl celebration, and says: “I went out of my way to avoid him, and I wasn’t alone. Walter Payton was right beside me and he was just laughing at McCaskey. Most of us just laugh to keep from strangling him.

“Can you imagine a bunch of players sitting around the night they win the Super Bowl and talking about how much they want to be traded? I think I might retire early rather than play the rest of my career for the current president of the Bears.”

Some of the players resented management’s refusal to meet the contract needs of Bell and Harris while the Bears were driving toward their first Super Bowl. There also were bitter negotiations between the club and defensive end Richard Dent, who led the NFC in sacks for the second straight season and was MVP at the Super Bowl while reaping a salary of $90,000 for the year.

McCaskey, 42, confuses the Bears, as perhaps is his intent. He is a Harvard business school graduate and former UCLA professor who once authored a book called “The Executive Challenge: Managing Change and Ambiguity.”

Many of McCaskey’s comments strike his players as ambiguous or just plain weird. Consider his comment to Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen on NBC-TV during the London exhibition game that the folding of the USFL would be “good for the players.”

Chicago Mayor Harold Washington also is confused about the man, even to the point of calling him “McCloskey.” The mayor wants a new football stadium for the city; McCaskey wants it in the suburbs.

“McCloskey is a mystery to me,” Washington told a radio interviewer. “I don’t understand him. He confuses me.” Asked if McCaskey knew what he was doing, Washington replied: “I doubt it.”

Some of the Bears still do not understand Ditka, either. After the final exhibition game, a victory over Buffalo that put the team’s record at 4-0, the coach charged several players with acting lazy and “taking the preseason off.” It did not take long for Dent, linebacker Otis Wilson and safety Dave Duerson, Pro Bowl performers all, to figure out he meant them.

“Why didn’t he just come to us?” asked Dent, who already had enough on his mind, wondering why McMahon, Payton, Perry and others get so much more attention than he does.

Said Wilson: “I don’t have to play like it’s the championship every day. I’m not going to kill myself for one man.”

Ditka has not tried to win any popularity contests with his team, and certainly did not become the bosom buddy of Buddy Ryan, his former assistant who left to become head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. “Mike Ditka’s a jerk,” Ryan said recently.

Ryan’s team will meet Ditka’s on Sept. 14 in the town that was not big enough for both of them.

Vince Tobin, 42, a former USFL defensive coordinator with the Baltimore--nee Philadelphia--Stars, took Ryan’s place with the Bears and immediately scrapped Ryan’s notorious 46 defense for one that juggles the linebackers, sometimes putting down linemen, such as Dent or Perry, on their feet, sometimes moving Duerson forward from the secondary instead of having two linebackers on that side of the field.

Tobin wasn’t sure how hectic life would be with the Bears, but when a Chicago newspaper confused him in a photo caption with his brother Bill, the silver-haired director of player personnel for the Bears, Vince’s wife Kathy joked: “Oh, no. I sent him up there with dark hair and they’ve already turned him gray.”

It could happen, what with Payton arriving late to camp in a hired helicopter, or with Perry arriving at close to 340 pounds and close to $3 million in endorsements richer, or with that crazy motor-scooter McMahon biking in and out of Platteville with excess baggage around his waist and another in a series of minor injuries, a groin pull that kept him out of most of the exhibition season.

While McMahon and Ditka traded barbs, Ditka also chose to light a verbal fire under third-string quarterback Mike Tomczak, who responded by becoming the second-string quarterback. Similarly, the Bears drafted Florida running back Neal Anderson in the first round, if only to remind Payton not to relax now that he is 32 and wears a Super Bowl ring.

The Bears otherwise have a similar look to last year’s team, plus the formerly AWOL defensive heroes, Bell and Harris. They did lose receiver Dennis McKinnon and defensive back Leslie Frazier to injuries suffered at the Super Bowl, but what the heck, if no other replacement can be found, the Refrigerator could always fill in.

He has played everywhere else--defensive tackle, defensive end, linebacker, running back, blocking back, wingback and wide, wide, wide receiver. He even tried to pass at the Super Bowl, getting sacked. Now he wants to run back kickoffs, and many people believe Perry will get his chance to do so soon--the minute Buddy Ryan gets to town.

“He’s a happy, big boy,” McMahon said of Perry. “People come up to him and say, ‘You’re fat!’ and he doesn’t care. There are other 300-pounders around, but they’re not built like him. Most of them are 6-6 or 6-7. Fridge is what, 6-1 1/2? But he plays a whale of a game defensively, and when you get a man that big moving on offense, something’s got to give, and it ain’t gonna be the Fridge.”

Perry provides comic relief, as does McMahon, who says his goal after football is to own his own golf course and allow golfers to play naked. McMahon also was in on the “Abbey Road” album re-creation in England, walking barefoot, ala Paul McCartney, in single file with kicker Kevin Butler, lineman Keith Van Horne and defensive tackle Dan Hampton.

It was McMahon who mooned a helicopter at New Orleans . . . McMahon who wore a ROZELLE headband . . . McMahon who invited an Oriental acupuncturist to the Super Bowl in defiance of McCaskey . . . McMahon who inspired one daily newspaper columnist here to recently advise the Bears to get rid of him . . . McMahon who filmed a motorcycle commercial in which his opening line was: “Outrageousness?”

Refrigerator Perry got a kick out of that.

“Is there such a word as outrageousness? “ he asked.

If there wasn’t, there is now.