McMahon Makes Bears Think Back : Pro football: The quarterback who led Chicago to the top in 1986 sparks the Vikings’ 19-12 victory.

Knocked silly by a kick in the head, Jim McMahon spent the final moments of his triumphant return to Chicago on Monday night sitting on the bench, his face buried in his hands.

“I didn’t know where I was,” he said.

When he jogged off Soldier Field moments later amid outstretched arms and loud cheers and fan screaming for him to come back home, he remembered.

This is still his town, even if the Bears aren’t his team, a fact that was made brutally evident again when McMahon’s Vikings defeated the Bears, 19-12, before 64,677.

The game was won by the Vikings’ top-rated defense, as Audray McMillian returned an interception for a touchdown and Jack Del Rio intercepted another pass at the goal line with three seconds remaining.

But the night belonged to the quarterback making his first appearance here since being traded in 1989, the man who led this team to its last world championship.

“Nobody wanted this game more than Jim McMahon,” Viking center Adam Schreiber said. “You could tell that every time he stepped into the huddle.”

And to think that this was going to be the night Chicagoans finally stopped living off of memories of that 1986 Super Bowl and got on with their lives.

Mike Ditka had been fired as Bear coach last summer, now it was time to end the aura of their old field leader and celebrate new Coach Dave Wannstedt and his new-look team.

It didn’t happen. McMahon showed up with his customary white headband, silver earring and guile.

He only completed 14 of 27 passes for 90 yards, his longest pass being 15 yards. He didn’t throw for a touchdown.

But he threw only one meaningless interception, scrambled enough so that he was sacked only once, and led his team on two 11-play scoring drives.

The second drive, resulting in a 25-yard field goal by Fuad Reveiz with 13 seconds remaining in the first half, deflated the Bears after they had closed an early gap to 10-9.

“He finds a way to get things done . . . we may be ugly right now, but it’s getting done,” said backup quarterback Sean Salisbury, who finished the game after McMahon suffered a slight concussion with 5:17 remaining.

McMahon is 29-5 in his career as a starter against teams from the NFC Central Division, with 24 victories in his last 25 divisional games.

More important to him, he is 2-0 against the Bears and the owner who he openly despises, Mike McCaskey.

“I hope he sleeps well,” McMahon said of McCaskey.

McCaskey will probably sleep better than Jim Harbaugh, McMahon’s counterpart, who did everything McMahon did not.

Under the sort of pressure that resulted in eight sacks, Harbaugh threw two interceptions and did not lead his offense to a third-down conversion until the fourth quarter.

On the Bears’ final drive, before throwing the game-ending interception, Harbaugh also lost about 30 seconds with an ill-advised seven yard scramble.

Harbaugh was booed throughout most of the final three quarters, and, unlike McMahon, nobody was waving warmly at him when he left.

“We got whipped in areas we thought we had made improvements in,” Wannstedt said.

The Bears began the game trying to work on McMahon’s mind as the Vikings eventually worked on Harbaugh’s body.

They chided him as they chased him around the backfield. Steve McMichael even slapped at him after one incomplete pass.

“You guys (reporters) made a big deal about this, not me,” McMahon said, shaking his head. “I mean, once the game started, the only thing important was winning the game.”

Don’t believe that for a minute. If the Vikings win the Central Division again--they are in second place with a 4-2 record while the Bears are 3-3--they will look back to this victory as a turning point.

“Just watching the man tonight, you knew,” Viking receiver Cris Carter said of McMahon. “He had come home.”