The second season started Thursday with the Bears` second team in place.
Forty-eight new players held their first practice in Lake Forest. On a scale of 1 to 10, Mike Ditka gave the group an 11 for enthusiasm.
That`s a little like recommending a blind date because of a great personality.
”I have a visual realization now of what my high school coach saw when he first saw me as a sophomore,” the Bear coach said teasingly after practice.
”Really, they`re not in that bad a shape. But they`ll be sore tomorrow.”
The players just hope there is a tomorrow, even if it promises aches and pains.
”We get up in the morning, check the TV and make sure we`re still working,” said quarterback Sean Payton, who played at Eastern Illinois.
The players arrived for work by bus at 7:45 Thursday morning and put in a long day preparing to play at Philadelphia a week from Sunday.
”It`s going to be competitive, it`s going to be fun, and it`ll be exciting,” pledged player personnel director Bill Tobin. ”We`ll all go out and have a good time.”
Of course, there are a few wrinkles yet to be ironed out.
”After Philadelphia, the next game is against Minnesota, and they don`t have a team yet. They have nobody,” Tobin said. ”That`s pretty high stakes poker they`re playing over there.”
Ditka, relaxed and confident, doesn`t think it`s that much of a gamble to take the field with these free-agent replacements.
”The keys will be the defense and the special teams,” he said. ”It`ll take a couple weeks for the offense to catch up.
”It`ll be great hitting. But you got to make sure you know where to put your hat when you`re hitting them.
”We`ll play every defense we have. We put in our three basic formations today. There will be a limited number of play-actions, but that`s about all.” Twenty-two of the 48 players had been waived by the Bears, 16 this year. So these people already possess a working knowledge of the playbook.
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Tobin said he began to piece together this team of free agents a week before the regular season began.
”We called everyone. There`s not a player here who called us. It was by invitation only. No tryouts. So they`re more than names to us,” he said.
”We were able to assemble this team without disrupting our scouting for the 1988 draft. I`m extremely pleased about that. The bulk of the work of putting this together has fallen on Kenny Geiger, myself, Bill McGrane, Sharon Davis and Nancy Gudgeon.”
Geiger is a scout. McGrane is the Bears` director of administration, and Davis and Gudgeon are on his staff.
Tobin thinks it`s wrong to dismiss these players out of hand for being unable to make the NFL grade in earlier chances.
”They are just a notch below the 1,600 players who walked out. These guys are the B group who were an inch short or a step slow, or maybe were overlooked. But they are just as enthusiastic and excited about playing for the Bears as the ones who decided to take a hike.
”There`s a lot of different terms being thrown around. But they`re not scabs. They`re players who want to play. They`re free agents who want an opportunity, and that`s what America is all about.
”You still have a right to work in this country. No one has to tell you what to do. You don`t have to be a bunch of sheep, in a union or out of a union.”
Ditka said he liked the way Payton and Mike Hohensee, who played for the University of Minnesota, threw the ball.
”Maybe they are better than any of us gave them credit for,” Tobin said.
Hohensee played this year in the Arena Football League with the Pittsburgh Gladiators and also had experience in the United States Football League.
”I`ve played in just about every league but the NFL,” said Hohensee, who was using Jim McMahon`s locker.
McMahon mentioned this week on his radio show that he wanted to be paid during the strike because he is on injured reserve. But the Bears say no injured-reserve players will be paid, that they`ll be treated just like other striking players who don`t show up for meetings.
Hohensee said it wasn`t a big deal to him to be in McMahon`s locker. But it would have been for some other aspiring players.
”Our phones have been going continuously. We`ve had hundreds and hundreds of people wanting to play,” Tobin said.
Tobin holds out hope to these newcomers that a few of them could keep jobs with the Bears even when the regulars return.
”There`s a chance the rosters will be increased,” he said. ”Very definitely, some of these players have a chance to remain with us if the strike ends.”
Wide receiver Ken Knapczyk was cut by the Bears in the preseason. His reasons for returning put the situation in perspective.
”I`ve got mixed emotions. But the opportunity to get an education made me decide to do it. I`m a year short of my college degree, and I need $4,000 or $5,000 to go back and get my degree,” he said.
”That`s the only opportunity I`m looking for right now. I don`t feel like this is the real thing, even though it is.
”I was a truck driver before I came here. I don`t want to go back to that. I was doing mill work in Bridgeview. I don`t want to do that.
”I`d just as soon see the old team come back as soon as they can. They`re the ones who earned it. I hope they get everything worked out.”