Bears Seem Determined To Return to Form That Made Them Champions

The endorsement offers have dried up, the Super Bowl rings are out of date and the party atmosphere is gone.

O.K., so the Chicago Bears don’t really ever stop partying. But they are taking themselves and their task much more seriously now that they are no longer the World Champions.

“You don’t hear people talking about how much money they made and the things they bought,” said running back Thomas Sanders. “It’s basically just concentration on football.”

The Bears were concentrating on football as a group in early May for a three-day minicamp, which is usually designed to familiarize the rookies and free agents with the playbook. But the veterans came to the camp in good shape and worked hard to erase the memory of their upset loss to the Washington Redskins in the first round of the 1986 NFL playoffs.

“It was real positive,” offensive lineman Jim Covert said of the camp. “It resembled the attitude we had before 1985.”

“Before 1985” means before the Bears won Super Bowl XX, before they became the most colorful sports team in America, before they signed dozens of contracts to hawk all sorts of commercial goods.

American sports fans and Madison Avenue were both abuzz with Bear fever and the Bears had the kind of players that begged for more attention rather than ducking it.

“You have guys on this team with such character, it’s amazing” said linebacker Mike Singletary. “Guys like the Fridge (William Perry) and (Jim) McMahon and Willie Gault and (Walter) Payton and (Steve) McMichael and (Dan) Hampton. You could go down the list for days and days. You have guys who have their own identity and yet still can get on the field and play like a team.”

It was because the Bears were such a popular team that they became the NFL’s outstanding target last year. As with the Dallas Cowboys of the past, teams wanted to beat the Bears more than they wanted anything else.

“That was the neat thing about it,” said Singletary. “That is why I was so hurt we didn’t make it. Because I knew we could.”

Singletary says the distractions of media attention and financial opportunities were not responsible for the Bears being less dominant in 1986.

“We were distracted last year, true enough, but at the same time, if our quarterback situation had been stable the last three years, I think we would have won the Super Bowl three years in a row.”

William Perry is the best example of the renewed enthusiasm and dedication to the game. Perry was verbally abused by Coach Mike Ditka and others for his weight problem at the end of the 1986 season but he came into the minicamp at about 315 pounds, far below his highest playing weight of the previous year.

Perry was also not playing the camp clown anymore. He was serious about his work and spoke sparingly to reporters.

Perry said the 1987 offseason was no different than the previous year, except that “I didn’t let people follow me around.”

It is not important how the 1987 NFL schedule was made up. What is important is that the newly disciplined Bears play the Super Bowl champion New York Giants in the first Monday night game of the season at Soldier Field.

The rest of the season could be downhill after that battle.

“I guarantee it will be a gut-check,” said Covert. “If we win that game, the whole country will be talking about us and that’s the way we like it.”