1985 Bears Coverage: Rams rate as better club, says Bear star

Every day of the 2015 Chicago Bears season, Chicago Sun-Times Sports will revisit its coverage 30 years ago during the 1985 Bears’ run to a Super Bowl title.

Rams rate as better club, says Bear star

Kevin Lamb

Originally published Jan. 23, 1986

Otis Wilson wasn’t looking for trouble, or even headlines. He was looking at the New England Patriots, whom the Bears

play Sunday in the Super Bowl, and recalling the Los Angeles Rams, whom the Bears beat 24-0 for the NFC championship 11 days ago.

“Over all, the Rams are better,” Wilson said yesterday. “I don’t think there’s any comparison. The Patriots are a good team or they wouldn’t have made it this far. But I think the Rams are a better football team.”

The Patriots’ offensive strength is their running game. Still, Wilson said the Rams and the New York Giants had better running teams. But isn’t the Pats’ Craig James dangerous? someone wanted to know.

“Any running back’s dangerous if you don’t tackle him,” Wilson said.

Now, about that Patriots’ passing game and quarterback Tony Eason.

“If you can get to him, he can be rattled,” Wilson said. “Any quarterback doesn’t like to get hit.”

In the war of words that precedes every Super Bowl, Wilson has been firing off unabridged dictionaries and smashing the Patriots right in the pride.

When he woke up yesterday, a local paper’s headline said, “Wilson predicts shutout.” The story quoted him as saying, “I see a big goose egg. It’s never been done in a Super Bowl and we want to be a history-making team.”

Wilson said he wasn’t guaranteeing anything, the way Joe Namath guaranteed the Jets’ victory when they were 18-point underdogs 17 years ago. “I said if we play our game the way we can, there’s a possibility we can shut them out,” he explained. “I don’t know if we will. We haven’t played the game yet.”

How important is it for the Bears to get a third straight postseason shutout?

“Real important,” Wilson said. “They can’t beat us if they don’t score.”

Wilson was even more put out by the question of whether coach Mike Ditka had said anything to him about boasting.

“He didn’t say anything,” Wilson said. “Why should he? It’s a fact. We would have done it the first time we played them except for that one play they made a 90-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter. Mike said the same thing.”

“I don’t think he’s predicting anything,” Ditka said. “He’s just talking. He’s having fun, that’s all.

“You say, `Is it confidence or overconfidence?’ Otis Wilson plays with a lot of fire and zeal. He’s a very inspirational guy to the rest of our people. He gets going early in the game, and sometimes he’s not going the right way, but he’s going full-speed.

“He sparks a lot of our people, and I think that’s all he’s trying to do. He may spark them by doing it. You’ve got to be able to back it up, that’s all.”

Wilson always has been sure of himself. His mother saw to that. Growing up in Brooklyn’s rough Brownsville section, he had to be.

And when he got drafted, he said no one had ever blocked him. “When I got to camp,” Wilson said, “I was blocked about four times in a row.”

But isn’t all this just rhetoric?

“It has a lot to do with what goes on Sunday,” Wilson said. “You know what they say: Hauling wood makes the game go good. They’ll be talking and we’ll be talking and we’ll all be in a real good mood to strap on the helmets and play.

“I can’t wait. I’ve waited a long time for this. Two weeks seems like a month.”