Mike Ditka died at 86, ESPN reported, and with him goes the last Bears coach who was bigger than the team he ran. Yahoo Sports also reported the death.
Ditka went into the Hall of Fame as a tight end, not a coach. Britannica's biography has him born October 18, 1939, drafted by the Bears in 1961, later a Philadelphia Eagle and a Dallas Cowboy. He earned that gold jacket in an era when the position was still an extra blocker's job. Then he came back to Chicago and coached the Bears to a championship in 1986, and that is the part that turned him into a folk hero.
Sentimental is the easy read. Mine is colder. Ditka's importance was never the trophy. It was the template: a Hall of Fame player who became a head coach and never stopped thinking like one, confrontational and unembarrassed in a way the modern league has largely engineered out. Head coaches now arrive as coordinators with a system, and then they get asked to be a CEO. Ditka was never a CEO. He was the loudest man in the building, and the building took his shape.
That is what the Bears actually lose. Not a scheme and not a coaching tree, a story. Chicago's idea of itself as a cold, brutal, run-it-and-hit-you franchise was written by that 1986 championship team, and every Bears team since has been graded against it. Anyone under middle age never saw Ditka coach live. Almost all of them can still do the impression, the gum, the stare, the voice.
My verdict: the tributes will be about the soundbites. He should be remembered as one of the last NFL head coaches who was permitted to have a personality and used it as a weapon. I don't expect the league to make another, and I don't think the Bears will hire one.
