Podcast part 3: Mike Ditka talks coaching 1980s Chicago Bears
The 1985 Chicago Bears offense couldn’t help but be good, having practiced daily against one of the NFL’s all-time great defenses, Mike Ditka said.
“If we didn’t defense ourselves, we were going to get killed,” Ditka told Gus Frerotte in the third part of this week’s “Huddle Up with Gus” podcast. “It made us better. It made our offense better.
“Don’t forget, we had the great Walter Payton, we had, (Jim) McMahon. For as nutty as he was, I would rather have nobody as my quarterback than him.”
Ditka said the the missing element to the Bears winning the Super Bowl — which they did during the ‘85 season — was developing the offense.
“The main thing we needed to figure out was, we had to put an offense together,” Ditka said. “Buddy Ryan ran the defense, and we had a helluva defense. We had some of the greatest players. We had (Dan) Hampton and (Steve) McMichael, (Richard) Dent, (Mike) Singletary and (Gary) Fencik.”
•••
Coming Thursday: Part 4 with Mike Ditka
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.