Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [85]
Halas was responsible for the careers of legends ranging from Sid Luckman, the Columbia quarterback who signed with the Bears in 1939, to George Blanda to Bobby Layne to Sayers and Butkus and, ultimately, Payton. In 1963, the Bears went 11-1-2, capturing the NFL Western Conference championship and beating the New York Giants, 14–10, for its eighth title. Chicago’s defense led the league in fewest rushing yards, fewest passing yards, and fewest total yards—only the third time such a feat had ever been accomplished.
And then, without much warning, the Chicago Bears collapsed. From 1964 through 1974, the franchise posted two winning records and zero play-off appearances. Their roster, once packed with standouts, was now a crypt for has-beens and busts. “A lot of progressive owners came along and passed Halas by,” said David Israel, a Tribune columnist. “They operated in modern ways, and the Bears refused to change.” The franchise relocated from Wrigley Field to Soldier Field in 1971, and while the move provided the team with a jump in capacity from forty thousand to fifty-five thousand, fans were running out of reasons to watch. A guaranteed sellout for decades, by the early 1970s the Bears were struggling to fill forty thousand seats.
Whereas once everything Halas touched had turned to gold, now he could do nothing right. The Bears mangled the draft, literally twice failing to make their first-round selections on time, and in 1970 losing a coin flip to the Steelers for the right to select a Louisiana Tech quarterback named Terry Bradshaw. Many speculated Halas, at sixty-eight, had lost the sharpness that once made him great. “George thought he was invincible and immortal,” said Don Pierson, who covered the team for the Chicago Tribune. “He was well-meaning, but he’d lost some acuity.” There were those who claimed that, with all his fame, Halas forgot what it took to be special. “The juices of humanity seem to have been squeezed from him,” William Barry Furlong wrote in The Sporting News. “He smiles as though it hurts. He pats a man on the back stiffly, like uncooked spaghetti.”
“[Halas],” wrote Furlong, “has all the warmth of broken bones.”
By the time the Bears selected Payton, they were a forgettable second-tier club. As other teams were starting to construct top-of-the-line weight facilities, the Bears purchased a twelve-in-one exercise machine from Sears. “Guys used it,” said Clyde Emrich, the team’s strength coach, “to hang their coats.” Vince Evans, a quarterback who joined the Bears in 1977 after four years at USC, says his college’s whirlpools, “looked like a Jacuzzi at the Four Seasons,” while Chicago’s “were buckets.” The Bears, wrote Jerry Green of The Sporting News, “had regressed to a desultory, slapstick organization.” Or, as Coady once quipped when asked what it’d take for the team to contend against Minnesota and Green Bay: “A couple of key plane crashes.”
What many failed to notice, however, was that things were beginning to change. In a shocking acknowledgment that his beloved organization was rudderless, on September 12, 1974, Halas hired Jim Finks, architect of the great Minnesota Vikings teams of the early ’70s, to replace his son, George Halas, Jr., as general manager. For the first time in franchise history, a non-Halas was in charge. “I have the authority to hire or fire anybody in the organization,” Finks said in his introductory press conference. “The Halases have agreed to turn over the full operation to me.”
A quarterback with the Steelers from 1949 to 1955, Finks’ claim to fame was once beating out an obscure rookie named Johnny Unitas for a roster spot. Upon retiring, Finks served as the backfield coach at Notre Dame for one and a half seasons, then was brought in as a chief scout and assistant coach by Calgary of the Canadian Football League.