The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest by Mike Ditka, Rick Telander

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chapter VII
Yolanda Is Waiting, Meester Deetka
    Dexter Manley, the Washington Redskins’ unpredictable and loud-mouthed defensive end, said early in the week that even though quarterback Jim McMahon was a threat on offense, Walter Payton’s running was more of a trouble spot for the ’Skins. “We’re gonna have to knock Walter Payton out of the game, “Manley said sweetly. “We’re gonna have to do that.” Not bad logic, perhaps. But not genius, either. And definitely not good pregame hype.
    The entire Bears team was studded with special athletes, special personalities. Payton was, indeed, the most special of them all. The wily running back out of little Jackson State was now in his 11 th NFL year, and he desperately wanted a championship ring before his time ran out. He had been the leading scorer in NCAA history when he left college, but he knew he needed to make his mark on the big stage, the NFL, to leave a grand legacy. In 1984 he had played in his seventh Pro Bowl, but he had been on mostly mediocre teams thus far in his career with the Bears—and that was why getting so close to the Super Bowl the year before had pained him so much. Time waits for no one. And as a not-so-big (5-foot-11, 205 pounds) workhorse tailback who had already carried the ball over 3,000 times in his pro career—Walter’s clock was ticking fast.
    “McMahon had recovered fairly well from his injuries—I mean at least he was upright and not in a body cast—and he came into the game almost like a real, non-limping quarterback.”
    —Ditka on the Redskins game
    A bigger problem for the Redskins, however, was their own record. They were 1–2 and had been wiped out in their season opener against the Cowboys 44–14 with quarterback Joe Theismann throwing five interceptions. Just the previous week they had nearly blown a 16–0 lead over the Houston Oilers before squeaking out a 16–13 win.
    The Bears had beaten the Redskins 23–19 in last year’s first-round playoff, but it had not been easy. Indeed, the Redskins had taken an intentional safety in the fourth quarter of that game, just on the chance of getting the ball back in better field position for a final run at a victory. The gamble failed, but the intent was there. Ditka was not complacent or certain about this fourth game. He worried about a blabbermouth like Manley, but most of all he worried about a shrewd coach like Washington’s Joe Gibbs.
    Anytime you play a Joe Gibbs-coached team, you worry. You know there’s a lot going on in that mind, and you know he’s thinking about stopping you. Joe retired years later, after winning the Super Bowl a couple times. Then he went on to be a car owner in NASCAR, and then I guess he got bored, because he came back to the NFL in 2004. He quit as the Redskins coach and president in 2008, and now he’s an advisor for their owner, Dan Snyder. Whatever, he’s no dummy, Joe Gibbs.
    A season or so later, I said Manley had the IQ of a grapefruit. That was a dumb thing to say, but I didn’t need to hear him flapping his mouth all the time. Hell, he had his own problems with drugs and other stuff, anyway. A columnist in Chicago said Manley “had the biggest mouth in a city of politicians,” so that was about all you needed to know. And I was going to stand up for my guys against everyone, take the heat for them. When you’re a team, it’s like you’re actually all part of the same person. If I took the heat, so what?
    The thing that happened in the Washington game was that it got away from the Redskins real fast. Sometimes that happens when nobody expects it. They had a guy, Jeff Hayes, who wastheir kicker and punter, and he pulled a thigh muscle kicking off after they first scored, and that just ruined them. Willie Gault took off after he caught the kickoff, made some fakes, turned on the jets, and ran right past Hayes for a 99-yard touchdown to put us up 10–7. It was the beginning of the second quarter, and by halftime we