While the New York Daily News’ Hank Gola rhapsodizes this morning about the glory of the 1986 New York Giants, the New York Post’s Paul Schwartz chats with a mainstay of the ’85 Bears juggernaut and coaxes the inevitable, unfavorable comparisons out of him.
“The fans this time didn’t know if the Bears were going to be for real or if they could win the game or not,” former Bears great Richard Dent this week recalled to The Post. “When I played, there wasn’t a second thought. The fans knew.”
“We took sledgehammers to kill flies,” was Dent’s description of the mayhem he and his teammates created. “We didn’t allow you to think you could play with us, we didn’t allow you second chances. We would finish you from the get-go.”
“When we played, when the offensive team came out of the huddle, they were trying to figure out how to stop us,” Dent said. “There’s no comparison there, it hasn’t been there since we won the Super Bowl, throughout the league.
“I don’t see anybody who looks like me on the team that is making that kind of thing happen. Do you see anybody who looks like Walter Payton on the team, running the ball that way?”
Dent actually played one season for the Colts back in 1996, but he’ll be in South Florida next weekend cheering on his Bears. He believes they can win, but also understands why they are the underdog. He says, “You kind of worry when you look at Peyton Manning,” admits he’s concerned about Rex Grossman – “It depends on how much rope they give him to play with” – and is not happy with the way the Bears utilize star linebacker Brian Urlacher.
“We’re not using Urlacher in a way where we can take advantage of his speed,” Dent said. “He’s in the middle of the field, it’s real easy to block him, it’s real easy to find him. I think he’s a weakside linebacker. Let him blitz, turn him loose.”
The NFL has quashed plans on the Bears’ part to show next Sunday’s Super Bowl on the jumbotron at Solider Field. Though I’m not entirely sure why anyone — including the homeless — would choose to watch the game outdoors on an early February evening in Chicago, I also cannot see the harm in allowing the public to do so (besides hypothermia, lewd behavior, destruction of public and private propertly, etc.)