Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I recently have watched the '91 Dallas vs Chicago playoff game on youtube and it was surprising just how bad the Bears looked. I thought it may have just been that one particular game against an up and coming Dallas team in which they didn't look good so I looked at the standings and looks like they indeed weren't that great.......they scored less than 300 points that season and by the time the '90's rolled around most all teams that had good offenses were scoring 300+ points per season.

'91 was clearly the last breath of steam the Ditka Bears had as they would go 5-11 the next year and the franchise wouldn't win 10 or more games in a season again until '01. For a team that played prior to the salary cap era the Chicago Bears from '86-'91 had to have been one of the most poorly managed teams there has ever been.

I don't know. There is enough room for critique of this very last playoff squad of Iron Mike's. They won quite a number of close games against weak competition. Their 11-5 finish, though, is definitely stronger than the 11-5 division-winning finish of a year prior when every other team in the NFC Central was...6-10 (then go on to win a lifeless 1st-Rd 16-6 snoozer over the 8-8 Saints, then get blasted at G-men, 31-3)!

In '91, they at least had a 12-4 team, Detroit (albeit, arguably, a fluke), in their division whom they did split with as well as they also beating NFC West champ, Saints, on the road. But, MAN...here they had to win that finale at San Fran, a 9-6 team already out of it, to win that darn division (not just that, but get 2ND-SEED)...and-yeah! In the '91 regular season Power Rankings thread some time ago, I didn't place da Bears in the Top 12 at all! Then again, you had two of the arguably best non-playoff-qualifiers of-all-time that very year (ain't no real crime), but still. Maybe if I re-did those '91 PRs again, I'd place them in there; maybe not. Guess it's a coin-flip to place them in 1991's regular season 'top 12' or not.

I guess I should see that 1st-Rd game vs Dallas again. I only ever saw it at the time and not the whole thing anyway. But do remember it being close-enough but Big D taking advantage of turnovers. Looking over that box-score, Bears sure had the time-of-possession over 'next year's-champs! 37+ minutes! That's practically G-men/SBXXV-esque! But only...they lost!! Three turnovers to Big D's zero clearly didn't help. But do consider that they went up against an obvious 'rising star' who, mind you, stormed into the post-season winning their last FIVE games - four of them being QUALITY wins! And this was the last Ditka playoff year in Chi-town. One year away from he and Singletary’s 5-11 Chi-town finale.

It could have been a worse showing. Could have been worse. They had a QB who could match-up more-than well-enough vs Beuerlein in Harbaugh, but Harbaugh was 'handcuffed' by Chicago's significantly lesser-QB-friendly environment. He'd realize his potential better in Indy years later under Marchibroda.

Who stressed out this, here, Steeler-fan more despite a win...Harbaugh in '95, or Larry Fitzgerald 13 years later??

Though not as bad as his cohort/nemesis, Buddy Ryan, Iron Mike despite his obvious background on that very offensive side of the ball (Numero Uno Tight End of All Time) wasn't quite the QB-friendly man either. But I feel the obvious thing that gets lost with the '85 Bears is their...OFFENSE! Great argument can be made that it was their BEST offense in franchise history! Not completely sure of that either way but, in my opinion, if da Bears' defense in '85 would have "only" been as good as their offense that they would have still been Super Bowl winners albeit they not capturing quite as much imagination from the non-football/non-sports world, perhaps put up 'just' an 11-5 or maybe 12-4 showing which, end of day, still would have been enough to hoist up that Lombardi. Maybe just a close win over Berry's Pats; that's all.

Ed Hughes, historically, really does get lost in it all as well! His time as their OC runs all the way up through that 12-4 top-seed campaign of '88 which, pretty safe to say, was their last 'very good' (maybe 'great') year under Ditka. McMahon's last year with da Bears as well. If Flutie ended up doing what he did 10+years later, can't see why he couldn't have been a more-than-ample McMahon-replacement. He sort-of showed signs of '98 while with Bears but more-so showed them his very brief time with Pats right after. I guess the high-pressure of players who were loyal to Fuller being against this "little" "pretty boy" (which he clearly was anything BUT) being McMahon's backup and then the town locally putting out a "Flutie, Flutie" song didn't help things. Perhaps wrong-place-at-wrong-time and/or Doug maybe just not quite yet being ready for the NFL.

I lean on Bears, nor Pats, being the right place for him at that moment but somewhere else maybe being better thus preventing him from ever having to go to Canada in the first place (would have been a loss for him, though, being he ended up being widely considered the Greatest CFL Player Ever or, at least, Greatest CFL QB Ever). And at turn-of-century, he may have prospered even-better than he did had he played elsewhere besides Buffalo. Very good OC Hughes was, but maybe the Bears' mismanagement/drama may have been too much after that very hard-to-follow-up Historic '85 Campaign!

And Neal Anderson...underrated in Bears lore! Yes, never want to see Sweetness go but he was the perfect replacement those succeeding years! Just that the team all around him - along with obvious changes - fell off.