There was always something wrong about saying Buddy Ryan coached defense. The units that he sent onto the field may not have been in possession of the football, but there was nothing defensive about them. They were the aggressors. They didn’t stop offenses; they routed them. Destroyed them. Humiliated them.
The former football coach who made his mark as a defensive coordinator with the Chicago Bears passed away Tuesday at 82.
1In the 1986 Super Bowl, the Bears defense, coached by Ryan, sacked New England Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan four times, intercepted him twice, and held the Pats to seven yards of rushing offense on eleven carries. The Bears won the game, but nobody remembers how they scored their 46 points. It was that defense of Ryan’s that captured the imagination of fans. That defense was, most would still agree, the best there ever was.
Ryan detested the idea of prima donna quarterbacks standing immaculately in the pocket and waiting until the coverage broke down somewhere, as it would, with enough time, resulting in a completed pass. This would be a lot tougher, Ryan decided, if the quarterback were on his back or in fear of his safety.
So he designed defenses that attacked, sending blitzes from everywhere, and leaving the few players remaining in coverage exposed. But not for long—or even at all.
Ryan was also aggressive in his football relationships. He was tough on players, profanely calling them out for missed plays. But they loved him for it … those who stuck, anyway. They loved him because his system worked and he made them winners.
He feuded with owners and other coaches, conspicuously Mike Ditka, who was his nominal boss at Chicago. During one game, the team’s only loss in the 1985 season, Ditka and Ryan had to be separated on the sideline. After the Super Bowl victory, the defensive players carried Ryan on their shoulders off the field. The offense did the same for Ditka, who patched up things with Ryan after many years and acknowledged that he was probably the greatest NFL assistant coach ever.
“The ’85 Bears would not have been the ’85 Bears without Buddy Ryan. You know, they [the defense] did what Buddy wanted them to do on defense. And fortunately we were good enough where our offense would get to the point where they could compliment some of things they did on the defense. But there’s no question, we won the Super Bowl because of our defense. You’d have to be a fool to say otherwise. We had great players on offense in Walter Payton and Willie Gault and some of the other guys we had, our offensive line, but our defense is why we won.”
Ditka throws around that kind of compliment in the way he once described the legendary Bears owner and coach, George Halas, as “throwing nickels around like they were manhole covers.”
Ryan moved on from the Bears to be a head coach with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinals, reaching the playoffs in some seasons, but never getting beyond the first round. He never seemed to fancy the offense enough.
But that Bears unit will be recalled whenever a defense takes over a game and does a public defenestration of a pretty boy quarterback the way the Denver Broncos did last year in the Super Bowl when they humiliated the Carolina Panthers and Cam Newton.
It was beautifully brutal. Just like the ’85 Bears—almost.
