With Ditka and McMahon Calling Shots, Bears Like to Attack : ANALYZING THE GAME

NEW ORLEANS —  The personalities of the coach and his quarterback, Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon, make the Chicago Bears’ offense what it is.

Compared with their peers in the NFL, the Bears aren’t extraordinarily talented on offense. San Diego, San Francisco, Miami and perhaps even New England, among others, are more talented.

But the Bears play the game with a flair.

They attack their opponents with a special relish. They appear to fight for the joy of fighting.

And somehow, their attitude usually projects into points. The gods of competitive sport, who hate dull football teams, usually smile on the Bears and make sure they win.

Or so it seems whenever McMahon goes to war with a battle plan by Ditka.

Those two are, respectively, the strangest quarterback and the strangest coach in a 28-team league.

McMahon is an oddball whose quirks of personality have been well documented in recent weeks, particularly in recent hours.

Ditka is a terrible-tempered competitor who was born to be the ringleader of a species that likes to be known as the Monsters of the Midway.

Separately, McMahon and Ditka would be formidable. Together they’ve been unstoppable this season, except in Miami, and they will be looking for their 18th victim here Sunday in Super Bowl XX.

They could, conceivably, beat the Patriots with a conservative game plan. Almost any other NFL coach with Ditka’s dramatic defense would play ultraconservative football on offense. Above all, he’d make sure that he didn’t blow the game with offensive mistakes.

You can be certain that such a thought never crosses Ditka’s mind.

Ditka’s first commandment, like Napoleon’s, is to attack.

The NFL’s most imaginative play-caller this season, Ditka sends in first-down passes, pitchbacks, screens, anything he can think of except Walter Payton off tackle.

When, for variety, or to appease his star running back, Ditka does signal for Payton off tackle, McMahon is a good bet to scratch the call and throw some kind of crazy pass.

Ditka gives McMahon the right of first refusal on all calls, which is unusual in today’s football.

On a 1980s team, only a coach who feels very sure of himself--and of his quarterback--would let an employee cancel a play in the huddle, before he even sees the defense.

The Chicago coach has that kind of respect for McMahon. Ditka says of McMahon: “He is the gasoline that drives the engine.”

The way the Bears attacked and destroyed the Rams Jan. 12 was typical.

When the Rams graciously gave them the wind in the first quarter, the Bears took possession at midfield and hit them with well conceived first-down passes and a brash scramble by McMahon. Then they struck with a first-down screen pass to Payton, and in a wink the Rams were down, 10-0, en route to a 24-0 defeat.

It shouldn’t be assumed, however, that the Bears are overwhelming on offense. They may score a lot of points Sunday, one way or another, but they probably won’t earn a lot.

Against a good defense, with their personnel, the Bears are incapable of mounting either a big-play attack, like Miami’s, or a grind-it-out attack, like that of the Raiders or Rams.

All they can do is fight with a brilliant but unusual quarterback who has proven that, in a pinch, he is capable of almost anything.

Specifically, McMahon has the arm to get the ball downfield, though he is often off target. He has the guile to “take what’s there,” as the coaches say, though he’d rather do his own thing. And he has the good athlete’s ability to run the ball, to scramble, when that is the right option.

In sum, McMahon is flashy but erratic. His personality is a plus for the Bears, on balance, making it possible that he will somehow come up with the game-winning play. But he could also be the tragic hero of the game, making the big mistake that blows it.

Offensively, the Bears as an entity are as brilliant and erratic as their quarterback. A typical Bear is wide receiver Willie Gault, who leads the club in foot speed, big catches, and big drops.

There is nothing on the Chicago team to compare with Miami’s receiving pair, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper, or the Ram pair, Henry Ellard and Ron Brown, or even New England’s Stanley Morgan and Irving Fryar.

Dennis McKinnon, who pairs with Gault on the Bears, played all-pro football in September and October, but he’s played hurt since then, which creates doubts about his Super Bowl value.

Gault is a better bet than any other Bear or Patriot to make the big catch Sunday, but the Patriots keep saying they don’t have to worry about him over the middle. And, conceivably, he could help them out with a drop.

Payton remains the most reliable Bear. At 31, after the hits of 11 seasons, Payton is still one of the best four-yard runners in the league, and he will be by far the best in this game.

How did the Bears lead the league in rushing this season? First, Payton is still sturdy and effective. Second, Ditka usually saved Payton until he had opened a lead with passes in the first or second quarters.

When the Bears were marching toward a 26-10 win at San Francisco, for example, Ditka never called Payton off tackle--or in any conventional running formation--until the game was in hand in the second half.

Ditka is like the Raiders’ Al Davis in one respect. He attacks to get a lead preferably, then runs to hold it. Payton gained many of his 1,551 yards this season when Ditka’s second-half objective was basically to run out the clock.

After carrying the Bears for most of his career, Payton, whose backfield mate is trusty journeyman Matt Suhey, deserved such a year.

To improve as a running team, what the Bears need most is William Perry at fullback in the same backfield with Payton. Despite his weight, Perry has much of the athletic ability of a young Bronko Nagurski.

Ditka, though, has warned Bear fans not to look for Perry Sunday.

A big imponderable is what the pressure of their first Super Bowl will do to McMahon and the others in the Bear offense. Nothing in football compares remotely to the pressure of this event when staged in an enclosed arena, where, in the chronic noise and hysteria, any play could be the winning or losing play.

The fun-loving Chicago athletes seem pressure resistant this week, just to look at them and talk with them. But who’s to tell?

The underdog Patriots, to begin with, came to town a little angry. They had already had it with the Bears’ rock concert, their “Super Bowl Shuffle” video, which has illustrated not so much the arrogance of the Bears as their short-sightedness.

Few people expect the Patriots to win. Thus the Patriots are feeling little pressure to win. They aren’t fretting about their problems. Emotionally, they’re just concentrating on the overbearing Bears.

Ditka and McMahon, those two wild, master tricksters, may need all their tricks to avert what would be, for Chicago, another catastrophe, like the fire.

Friday: The New England defense.