Clubhouse Chatter: Who is the most overrated coach/manager in Chicago history?
What our Sports staff has to say while waiting for the games to resume.
I don't know about overrated since he usually always produced, but the book on former Blackhawks coach Mike Keenan was that over time he wore his teams down physically and mentally.
- Dave Oberhelman
Mike Ditka. Yes, he guided the Bears to a lopsided Super Bowl win in 1986. Given all of the talent during that era, Ditka should have won two or three more.
- Scot Gregor
I have to assume most of us will be going with Mike Ditka here. The Bears should have won three or four Super Bowls in the mid-1980s, but Iron Mike lost focus after Super Bowl 20. The TV commercials were one thing, but he also made a drastic error by bringing Doug Flutie aboard at the end of the 1986 season, and also lost plenty of players by calling them "goons on the picket line" during the 1987 strike. "When he turned his back on us, we felt abandoned," Mike Singletary said in a 1992 Chicago Tribune article. "We felt like orphans."
- John Dietz
Mike Ditka. Coordinator Buddy Ryan directed arguably the best defense in football history in 1985. Ditka ran the offense. All he had to do was call Walter Payton's number and give the ball to the Fridge once in a while to shake things up. Both were carried off the field on players' shoulders after the Bears won the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
- Jerry Fitzpatrick
That's a tough one. I can't pick a particular one. Since Notre Dame is often considered to be somewhat of a "Chicagoland" school with all of its subway alumni, I'll say the Irish have brought in a few coaches for whom they had high hopes and things never materialized.
- John Leusch
I hate to say it because I love "Da Coach." But Mike Ditka. Many great teams, but only one Super Bowl championship.
- Patricia Babcock McGraw
I'd love to take a shot at Dusty Baker or Mike Ditka, but my vote has to be for Leo Durocher. Leo the Lip. Leo the Lion. But definitely not Leo the Champion. His mishandling of the great 1969 Cubs team was directly responsible for the September swoon that cost the Cubs the division and handed it to the Miracle Mets.
- John Radtke