Only two faces in the photograph of the Bears` 1963 championship team also show up in the one of the 1985 club. Ditka and Dooley both stare out in challenge, bridges over 21 years of intervening joy and sorrow for Chicago.
Mike Ditka, the last coach George Halas loved so much that he picked him to reshape his team. And Jim Dooley, the first one he loved enough to hand-pick him as his successor in 1968.
Dooley had declined interviews since he returned to the Bears in 1981 to accept a position few understand. To say he is an assistant coach is accurate, and yet not a complete explanation.
He is really the Bears` conscience, and he wants to set the record straight now after so many years of his self-imposed exile. In a three-hour interview,
Dooley talked about the way it was and the way it is on the Bears.
Halas reluctantly passed the baton. His hips were so bad that he couldn`t go on coaching, and he was preparing for an operation he`d have in England. When he summoned Dooley to his home, he made him The Chosen One with a voice sputtering in tearful farewell.
Dooley played for Halas, assisted Halas as a coach and, even after Halas fired him in 1971, was a friend and confidant in Halas` final years.
Halas deeply wounded Dooley once he was head coach and scarred him for life. When Halas died, however, Dooley was there to kiss him in a poignant reminder that love is the strongest emotion of all.
”I bent down, kissed him and told him to stay tough,” Dooley recalled,
”and 15 minutes later he died. He had wanted to make it to All-Saints Day, the first day of November (1983). He missed it by a few minutes.”
Dooley has seen that face since. He saw Halas just last Sunday in Tampa, as a matter of fact.
”I saw a man with fist raised jumping out on the field, and I jumped back as if it was an apparition. What I saw in Ditka doing these things was the Halas spirit. Halas was there,” he said.
”It`s eerie. Halas had bad hips. Mike has bad hips. But I always say to Mike that Halas would have still outrun him if they were the same age and they had their bad hips together.
”I don`t know. Maybe not. Neither one could accept losing. Violent men, good men.”
Dooley expected to be in a championship picture again long before last year. He never would have believed he`d be fired after four nonwinning seasons as coach and depart the Bears in disgrace.
How could such a reversal happen to a man Halas had commissioned to bring his defense into the modern age? Especially after Dooley succeeded so well with the project he began in 1962 that by 1963 the Bears had risen to be the best in football with a defense that has remained a bedrock for the team ever since.
Dooley helped create a monster, only to surprisingly see it turn on him and eat at his heart, driving him into exile.
Draw that 1985 team photo near and look closely at Dooley`s face. You will then see the cracks and creases that despair put there, a face far different than the one in the 1963 picture that reflects the hope of youth.
”I was a broken man, disillusioned and ashamed of myself for failing,”
said Dooley, who was fired after the Bears lost their last five games of the 1971 season to finish at 6-8.
”I was a hotshot coach in those years, and in four years I was a bum. If there had been a beach nearby, you would have found me there. A beach bum sounds much better than what I was.
”I went nowhere, did nothing. Just–how should I say it?–I wasn`t a wild man or anything, but I became indiscreet in my personal life, wasn`t the father or the husband I should have been. I also went bankrupt during this period.
”Thank God I had a strong wife who was able to hold the family together. To me that is the best thing that ever happened to me, to see my family survive a troubled time in our lives.”
That Ditka coached the Bears to the Super Bowl in his fourth year served as a vicarious vindication in some strange way for Dooley.
He had come full circle, an assistant for both title teams. It erased some of the stigma he felt he carried from his disastrous days as head coach, winning a ring he`ll put on only on game days and special days.
He admits he was considered a Halas spy by some people when he returned in 1981 while Neill Armstrong was the coach, but he claims he was meant only to be Halas` eyes and ears.
”Halas thought Armstrong was a tremendous person, but he wanted somebody more physical, stronger,” Dooley said. ”He heard that Neill was bringing in players from the snow and rain during practice, leaving practices early.
”Now Halas, you must remember, didn`t think anything about practicing if the weather was 30-below zero. It`s how he came up and he brought me back to make sure the correct things were done.
”They said I was a spy. I never was a spy. I`d phone Halas each week and he`d want to know if I thought they`d win. I think he was concerned about how things were being done and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on his team for him.
”He couldn`t understand how a coach he hired could leave practice early. After he got Ditka, he felt more secure about having a strong man in the job. ”Ditka had made as much mischief as a player as a Jim McMahon or a Richard Dent have. He probably did worse than either of them has.
”But, like Halas, Ditka believes there is nothing to replace a practice. So he has problems with McMahon and Dent from that aspect, not any other. Halas would have had the same trouble understanding them, too.
”Ditka, as a player, practiced when he shouldn`t have and it`s why he has sore hips today. Every day he fought battles and he had to win them, with others and himself. He was never satisfied the way he played or practiced, always throwing his helmet. He was a tight end who just played like a linebacker.”
Dooley`s return was the first sign that Armstrong would soon be gone. Halas was itching for a change and saw in Ditka a spitting image of himself.
”Halas` secretary, Ruth, told me Halas was watching a Bears game at Dallas on TV with her when there was a close-up on camera of Ditka, then an assistant coach for the Cowboys, storming and ranting on the sideline,”
Dooley said. ”This was in 1981 when the Bears lost to them.
”Halas turned to Ruth and said, `That`s my coach, that`s who I want.`
Mike also had written him that letter and hit his weak spot. I know Mike said in there it didn`t matter about the money he got.
”I know it was Halas` weak point, since I used it myself. By 1961 Johnny Morris had taken away my receiving job. I went to Halas and told him I`d like to be an assistant to him and I`d take even less money than the $12,000 he was giving me to play.
”He thought that was great. Just loved the idea. He even told me he`d allow me to work six months of the year teaching junior high.
”The first thing Halas did was to come to me and say the Bears were playing with a 1940s defense in the 1960s. He wanted me to research how we could improve the defense by getting linebackers dropping into the secondary against the pass and also coordinated with the line.
”Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi had put in some innovative schemes with the New York Giants as assistants and took them with them to Dallas and Green Bay to be head coaches and the Bears were behind the times.
”Halas wanted me to come back after an off-season of research ready to install a new defense in 1962. I came back with colored charts and films of teams who`d coordinated the linebackers better.
”Halas was excited. He said, `First day of camp you`ll explain this to the team and tell them what we`re doing.` It was probably the one day I enjoyed the most with the Bears.
”Before, the linebackers hadn`t had any organized pattern. It was man-to-man in coverage basically. Now they heard what I was proposing and they understood the new defense would make them winners.
”It also prompted me to go to Halas to ask for a raise. He said, `We agreed you would take a paycut.` But he decided I could make $15,000 a year because I had done the job.”
The new defense helped the Bears go 9-5, and they used that as a steppingstone to their 11-1-2 record during their 1963 title run.
When Dooley was handed control by Halas in 1968, he figured he`d win right away as head coach, and win big. But he found out quickly that Halas wasn`t going to allow him too much power.
”He had me sign papers saying I would never allow my name to be used on TV or in advertisements,” Dooley said. ”His idea was that coaches should coach, and that`s all.
”Radio and TV stations wanted me for a show of my own, but I couldn`t. I think Halas figured if he let his coach go on TV, pretty soon his players would be on TV, and he didn`t want extracurricular activities.
”He always told me: `You coach. I`ll do everything else.` I learned how bad the situation was for me the day Roosevelt Taylor came to me.
”He felt he was as good as any free safety in the league and found out that he wasn`t making as much money as those other top safeties were. `I lay my life on the line for you and you aren`t able to give me a bonus or more money.` That was what he told me and it was true. It was out of my hands, out of control.”
Halas knew how to deal with Taylor. He was traded by the next season.
”Halas was so leery of attorneys, we`d never draft a player who had one. So in those days, the players talented enough to go in the first couple of rounds got an attorney and we had to draft players in the first two rounds who didn`t have an attorney even though they weren`t first- or second-round caliber,” Dooley noted, his memory still stinging.
”As a result, we fell behind with these poor drafts and it hurt the team for 10 years or so. It takes quite a long time for any team to recover from such awful drafts. You need continuity in the game to be successful.
”I can laugh now, but it wasn`t funny at the time. We drafted by a committee system of 8 to 10 people, and it didn`t work at all. We almost passed with our first-round pick in 1968.
”George Allen built the 1963 team with his wheeling and dealing. After he left the Bears in 1965, we didn`t have a guy who was a true GM until Jim Finks (who arrived in 1974). That wasn`t my strength.
”If I had Finks as a GM, I`d have gone to the top with the Bears. I`ll believe that forever. I think I did the best as any head coach could with what I got to work with. I often would think about it and I decided I did all right.
”I was so naive. Halas and I couldn`t talk in those days. Before then, he was like a father to me. But suddenly, there was nothing to talk about because Halas didn`t want to hear I needed him to pay more money so I could get better people and win. We lost communication.”
In Dooley`s rookie year as head coach, the Bears went 7-7. The next year, the house collapsed. They went 1-13, and he was on a downhill slide he couldn`t stop.
”From being someone who could actually do no wrong for the Bears when I was an assistant, I suddenly could do no right, and it was unbelievable,” he said.
”When they fired me, I was so disillusioned. I was really down on my luck and kept going down. I felt I had no direction to go. You must know that the Halas family and the Dooleys were very close. Our children grew together, and suddenly we were cut out.”
It wasn`t until 1977, when Sid Luckman coaxed Dooley out of a life he likened to that of a recluse, that he began to fit the pieces back together.
Slowly, he and Halas began to talk and laugh again. Dooley said Halas avoided mentioning the hard times the men went through. No scores were settled. Halas simply let Dooley back in the door.
Today, Dooley sits in a basement office musty with the odor of the recent flood and computes the chances the Bears will take each Sunday. His mind is filled with the percentages of this play working or that play working.
He usually whispers suggestions, but in the second game of the this season, against Philadelphia, he knew Ditka should try for a 37-yard field goal in the fourth quarter on fourth-and-one at the 20 in a game the Bears led by three points.
So, in a group discussion, he pushed in a louder tone than usual to have Kevin Butler kick. After Butler missed, it was an angry Ditka who demanded to know from his assistants who had talked him into an attempt for three points when he wanted to go for the first down.
”In unison, all the assistants pointed to me and shouted, `Dooley.` It was sort of comical, and we won anyway,” Dooley said.
Dooley evaluates films of the upcoming opponents and identifies small details that could help the Bears win. He also thinks ahead during games.
For example, when Minnesota was beating the Bears 23-0 this year, he told Ditka in the fourth quarter it was crucial for the Bears to score a touchdown. ”Because we`d beaten them 23-0, and if the division came down to a tie, we can win it with the point edge over them in head-to-head games,” he said. The Bears were able to score that TD in a 23-7 loss and Dooley felt better even in defeat.
Dooley appreciates that Ditka has given him the chance ”to go along for a ride when he didn`t have to. He was there in 1962 when I explained to the team about the new defense and I think he gives me credit for knowing football.
”You know, Halas wouldn`t even have to see the games to know his team is doing well. If he could read the daily papers, he`d love it.
”Because he loved controversy, just as Ditka does. He took on all comers, same way Ditka does, every day of his life.
”Having Mike succeed helps make up for some of the bad times I had. I see what I might have done. I think Halas really did like me. And I loved him.”