November 30, 1986

There was nothing typical about the Chicago Bears team that had won Super Bowl XX. They were brash and cocky in a way that the NFL did not condone or prepare for. They cut a hip-hop video declaring themselves champions in December, usually an act of hubris that gets punished, but nobody that season could touch them. They shut out both their NFC opponents in the playoffs, and they beat an overmatched New England Patriots team as badly as anyone had ever been beaten in a Super Bowl before. They boasted the all-time leading rusher in Walter Payton, still a leading star at thirty-two, and quarterback Jim McMahon provided a spiritual locus for the team, even if he wasn’t a superstar. Their time in London the next preseason for an exhibition game against the Dallas Cowboys felt, appropriately enough, like a coronation for the dynasty that would see out the rest of the decade.

To paraphrase a famous English playwright, the course of pro football never runs smooth. The defense would have to manage a transition; Buddy Ryan was gone, replaced as defensive coordinator by the more businesslike Vince Tobin. The Bears were prime candidates for the Super Bowl Hangover, and for Jim McMahon, the most unlikely student in the history of Brigham Young University, the hangover was not metaphorical. McMahon showed up to camp a shocking twenty-five pounds overweight. William Perry, defensive tackle, occasional fullback, and prehistoric meme, also looked out of shape, but nobody was quite sure what the Refrigerator’s playing weight was. And though McMahon looked sharp on opening day, getting past the Cleveland Browns in a 41-31 shootout, he strained his rotator cuff, an injury that would recur throughout the 1986 season. Replacing him was undrafted backup Mike Tomczak.

Mike Tomczak played his college ball at Ohio State and his only previous noteworthy play as a professional was as part of the kickoff team in Super Bowl XX; he was called for a 15-yard facemask penalty. The team liked him well enough, and his Midwest pedigree, Polish last name, and general pity assured that the Bears fans would give him the benefit of the doubt. He was present for an emotional win over a returning Buddy Ryan and the Eagles, and a big win over eternal rival Green Bay, but threw no touchdowns in either game. He threw for only seventy-four yards against the Packers. The next time McMahon was injured the Bears turned instead to Steve Fuller, and they also executed a panicked trade for the rights to USFL star and Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie. Flutie grabbed headlines but was unimpressive in spot duty, unpopular with the locker room, and was thought to be too short to succeed in the NFL. The next time McMahon missed time, Tomzcak was back, and muddled through victories over bottom feeders Tampa Bay and Atlanta. McMahon was finally knocked out for good against the Packers on a hit so blatantly dirty that the Packer responsible, Charles Martin, was suspended an extra two games, the first suspension for an on-field act in modern NFL history. With one touchdown against six interceptions but a mysterious 4-0 record as a starter, Tomczak was now in charge of a Super Bowl contender and headed into battle with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

These, of course, were not the Pittsburgh Steelers of myth. Of the planetarium of Hall of Fame stars that helped the team win four Super Bowls in the 1970s, only three players and a coach still remained. Chuck Noll ensured everyone would meet baseline competence, Donnie Shell kept the defense from getting embarrassed deep, and John Stallworth could bail out a rotating crop of bad quarterbacks, who were kept upright by center Mike Webster. The quarterback starting against Chicago was Mark Malone. Malone was an athletic project drafted in 1981 out of Arizona State, in a system where he mostly ran the option. In modern cliché, he was an Athlete Playing Quarterback. Noll used his athletic skills in odd ways, sending him to wide receiver for a few plays, where he once caught a 91-yard pass from Terry Bradshaw, while grooming him to be Bradshaw’s long-term successor, but a knee injury meant that his days of being a dual threat were short. 1986 was his first year as the full-time starter, and he very quickly developed an adversarial relationship with Pittsburgh media during a 1-6 start. He was benched for two games in favor of Bubby Brister, and even Bradshaw put his two cents in, saying "Oh, Mark's got good enough skills, but he can't carry a football team. Let's just say that he's not my kind of quarterback. And the fans here don't like his style. I get letters." Malone came back in for a struggling Brister after two games and cobbled together a brief win streak, but that quickly gave way to more losing, and the Steelers headed to Soldier Field with a 4-8 record. A loss would mean the first consecutive losing seasons in Pittsburgh since 1970 and 1971.

They almost pulled off the upset, though it wasn’t pleasant viewing, a putrid slugfest where it was hard to tell what was good defense and what was bad offense. Even the great Walter Payton wasn’t immune to mistakes, fumbling into the endzone and costing the Bears an early chance at a touchdown. Malone and Tomczak threw two interceptions each, and the only passing touchdown of the game came from Steelers punter Harry Newsome. After a bad snap on a field goal attempt, Newsome managed to avoid the rush just long enough to find tight end Preston Gothard for a twelve-yard touchdown. With a chance to ice the game on first and goal, Malone threw a pass that was tipped by Refrigerator Perry on the line, and eventually corralled by Mike Singletary, and the Bears went on a death march of a ninety-six-yard drive, with Payton rushing ten times for 42 yards and the game-tying touchdown. The Bears would win with a forty-two-yard field goal less than a minute into overtime, mercifully ending this game that nobody asked for more of.

Some fans take heart in winning ugly. It’s the true test of character, it’s said, to still pull out the result when everything is going wrong. It’s a strong argument with strong priors, but the Bears of 1986 exclusively won ugly. They won ugly fourteen times, and their 29 wins over two years was a new NFL record, but beating up on Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Tampa Bay, and Detroit, as they did for half their win total, was no longer an option when they got to the playoffs. They folded in their very first playoff game to Washington, and never made it back to another Super Bowl. Their championship window, which looked as wide as a theatre screen, turned out to only be a porthole, with a rogue wave poised to sink the whole operation.