Rozner: Anger fueled Bears defense in Super Bowl XX

The Los Angeles Rams were fuming.

After the Chicago Bears took them apart in the NFC title game in January 1986, the Rams complained about how much the Bears yapped during the game, calling them arrogant and several words not suitable for younger viewers.

"Well, when you get whipped like they did, they're probably going to whine," says Dan Hampton, the best player on the best defense in NFL history. "We beat them 24-0, and it wasn't that close. Eric Dickerson put the ball on the ground a couple times and he didn't run for 50 yards.

"We told them what we were going to do to them, and we did it. If that's arrogance, then guilty as charged, your honor."

Hampton laughs loud as he recalls the way the Bears would look into the eyes of their opponents and see fear. But who wouldn't be afraid? After a playoff game following the 1984 season, Washington quarterback Joe Theismann said playing the Bears defense was akin to playing on the expressway in traffic at rush hour.

"I can see why you wouldn't want to play us," Hampton says with a grin. "That probably wasn't fun."

After shutting out the Giants and the Rams in the NFC tournament, the Patriots entered Super Bowl XX - 30 years ago Tuesday - fresh off a win over the Dolphins in the AFC title game, but Hampton says the Pats were anything but confident.

"You could tell looking at (quarterback) Tony Eason the week of the game that he was scared to death," Hampton remembers. "I even said it on Friday before the game. I said, 'They better have their backup quarterback ready.' You could see it in the kid's eyes. He didn't want to play. He didn't want to be out there with this group."

The Pats rushed 11 times for 7 yards. They threw 36 times and completed 17 for 116 yards, but 71 of those yards came in the fourth with some defensive stars off the field. New England QBs were sacked seven times and threw 2 INTs. The Pats fumbled four times and had the ball for only 20:45.

The jailbreaks began immediately and Eason was searching for a lifeline, bailing out and hitting the deck quickly. He was so defeated that veteran Steve Grogan took over midway through the second quarter. The Patriots had minus-19 yards of offense at halftime when the Bears led 23-3. They didn't go positive until late in the third quarter.

"Stanley Morgan, the great veteran receiver, was at a banquet years later doing a speech," Hampton recalls. "The game came up and he said something along the lines of our secondary not being that great.

"He said he came back to the huddle after the sixth or seventh play and said to the quarterback, 'Hey, get it to me. I'm wide open for a second.' And Tony Eason said, 'I thought I was open for a second, too, until they got me.'

"Steve Grogan knew it wasn't gonna be easy, but he stood in there. Give him credit for that. We hit him a lot and we hit him hard."

The 1984 Bears set a record for most sacks in a season. The 1985 Bears might have set a record for most quarterbacks knocked out or terrified.

"Anybody would have been scared facing us," Hampton says. "In '84, we were even more explosive as a defense because we had Todd Bell. He might have been the best player on that defense."

The week before the Super Bowl brought talk of the early-season meeting with the Pats at Soldier Field, when the Bears won 20-7. The home team forced 4 turnovers, sacked Eason six times and hit him twice that many. The Bears led 20-0 when the Pats scored on a short pass play that went for 90 yards in the fourth quarter.

"There was conversation during the week about how it's hard to beat a team twice in the same year," Hampton remembers. "We thought that was funny."

No one was laughing after an early Bears fumble that put the Pats in field-goal range. The Bears forced 3 incomplete passes, but New England got 3 points on the board in the second minute of the game.

"The overarching sentiment from early on in the game was we were really (ticked) off because we wanted the shutout," Hampton says. "We wanted three in a row. So we were really (ticked) off they got the early field goal after the fumble. Our offense dropped the ball and gave them the chip shot.

"More than winning it was about how we wanted to win, because we knew we were gonna win. And when they got that chip shot it incensed us. You have no idea how mad we were at our offense.

"We started mouthing off to the offense right away. There was a lot of that in those days. We would yell at the offense, 'Just hold them,' when they went out there, and, 'Let us score.' They gave them a field goal. We were really mad. We took it out on the Patriots."

And had it been 44-0 early in the fourth quarter - rather than 44-3 - the Bears would have been in a position for a third straight shutout in the postseason.

"In those days, we wanted to lose the coin toss because we wanted to go out on the field first," Hampton chuckled. "If we didn't score as a defense, we knew we'd give Walter (Payton) good field position."

Thirty years have passed, but perhaps the greatest team in NFL history is as celebrated as ever.

"The whole package of that team, the characters, the way we did it, the greatest running back of all time, it left an indelible image in the mind of America," Hampton says. "It was the team that made women love football. It was great entertainment. It's a team people don't want to forget."

Indeed.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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