The Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears will meet on Sunday with first place in the NFC North on the line. The two teams will play twice in three weeks in a renewal of one of the oldest and most intense rivalries in NFL history. The rivalry has been one-sided since Brett Favre arrived in Green Bay in 1992 with the Packers dominating. But now, the Bears are winning again, and the intensity level will be higher. Today, we look back at the most intense period in the rivalry between the Packers and the Bears, when Forrest Gregg and Mike Ditka were coaching the teams and the level of hatred was dialed up to 11.

Remembering When Forrest Gregg and Mike Ditka Helped the Packers Bears Rivalry Get Ugly: The Background

The Packers-Bears rivalry dates back to 1921 with Curly Lambeau and George Halas coaching their respective teams. In the 1980s, both franchises hired Hall of Fame players to coach their teams. One of the last things Halas did before he passed away in 1983 was hiring Ditka to be his head coach. Ditka played tight end for the Bears in the 1960s. As a coach, he turned the Bears into winners, and they dominated the Packers and the NFC Central Division. They won the Super Bowl after the 1985 season with one of the most dominant defenses in NFL history.

Meanwhile, the Packers hired Gregg to take over as head coach after the team fired Bart Starr after the 1983 season. Unfortunately, after the team finished 8-8 in Gregg’s first two seasons as coach, the Packers started losing. They won a total of nine games in his last two seasons as coach and fell to near the bottom of the league in the standings.

The rivalry between Gregg and Ditka dated back to their playing days. When they both started coaching, it took on a new dimension. The bad blood escalated before the regular season even started. During a preseason game between the teams at Milwaukee County Stadium, the intensity level started to rise. Right before the half, the Bears tried to run out the clock. Gregg called a timeout and Ditka got angry.

Because of the baseball configuration of County Stadium, the two teams were on the same sideline. Ditka started yelling at Gregg and the two went back and forth. Gregg was quoted as telling his team, “You take care of the Bears, and I’ll take care of Ditka.” The two teams have not met in the preseason since then.

The First Collision

During the 1984 regular season, the teams split their games. The first meeting came in Week 3 at Lambeau Field. The Bears eventually won the defensive struggle 9-7. There were five unsportsmanlike conduct penalties thrown in the game.

Bears safety Gary Fencik received one for kicking Packers tackle Karl Swanke. “Yeah, I kicked him,” Fencik admitted after the game. ‘‘I kicked the [bleep] out of him. I’m not proud of it. But in this game sometimes you get into that gray area.”

Packers offensive tackle Greg Koch summed up how the Packers felt about the Bears. “They’re a bull [bleep] team and a bull [bleep] organization.”

The Packers returned the favor at the rematch in Chicago that year when Rich Campbell threw a last-minute touchdown pass to Phil Epps in a 20-14 win. It would be the only coaching win Gregg would get over Ditka and the Bears in eight games.

Remembering When Forrest Gregg and Mike Ditka Helped the Packers Bears Rivalry Get Ugly: The Rivalry Heats Up

The first meeting in 1985 came on Monday Night Football in Chicago. Ditka added fuel to the rivalry when he handed the ball to 300-plus pound defensive tackle William “The Refrigerator” Perry who scored on a one-yard touchdown run. That embarrassed the Packers and made Perry into a celebrity on national TV.

The second meeting at Lambeau Field was a grudge match. Before the game even started, someone left a bag of fertilizer in the Bears locker room. A note attached from a local radio station said, “Here’s what you guys are full of.” That got Ditka ticked off.

Things just got downright nasty on the field. The Packers took the lead on an early field goal. Then, on the Bears first drive, Chicago’s Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton ran around right end and headed to the sideline. Packers cornerback Mark Lee pushed Payton out of bounds. The Bears running back grabbed Lee by the facemask and carried him out of bounds. They collided with the bench and the referees called Lee for a late hit and ejected him from the game although Payton was the one who carried Lee out of bounds.

Later in the game, Packers safety Ken Stills hit Bears fullback Matt Suhey well after the whistle. It was one of six personal fouls called in the game. “I don’t mind that,” Gregg said after the game. “He took a crack at somebody. That’s aggressive football.”

In this game, Ditka used Perry as a receiver, and he caught a touchdown pass to further rub things in the Packers face. The Bears won 16-10 in one of their closer games of the season.

“I knocked the crap out of Payton. He’s such a good athlete that he just kept on going,” Packers linebacker Brian Noble said.

The Low Point

The low point of the rivalry took place the following year in 1986. The Packers slipped to 4-12 while the Bears were the defending Super Bowl champs. The teams met at Soldier Field in Chicago in a game the Bears eventually won 12-10.

In this game, Packers defensive tackle Charles Martin delivered a late hit on Bears quarterback Jim McMahon after Lee intercepted a pass. Martin body slammed McMahon well after the play and separated his shoulder. Martin was ejected from the game and later suspended.

“I just reacted,” Martin said after the game. “I’m sure I roughed him up a little bit and a little late, but it was not intentional. I did wrong. That’s true enough, because of the way I did it. I wasn’t trying to put him out of the game or anything. It’s just the way it happened. When we get an interception, we go after anyone we can.”

“I guess he ain’t in no position to win the Nobel Peace Prize for intelligence,” said Bears defensive tackle Steve McMichael when asked about Martin.

“If I had my way, I’d get my magnum and blow his rear end away,” Bears linebacker Otis Wilson said after the game when asked about the Martin hit.

“That wasn’t just bad, it was cheap, the cheapest play I’ve ever seen,” said Bears safety Dave Duerson said. “I think he [Martin] was trying to end Jim’s career.”

“Charles Martin is a very aggressive player,” Noble told reporters. “If he body-slammed him, he body-slammed him, and I’m glad he did it. If it was late, then they [the referees] did what they should have done.”

Remembering When Forrest Gregg and Mike Ditka Helped the Packers Bears Rivalry Get Ugly: A Rivalry Renewed

Things cooled off a bit after Gregg left Green Bay to be athletic director at SMU after the 1987 season. But the rivalry during this time was intense.

“We always wanted to beat Green Bay. That was part our demeanor,” Ditka said. “They went after a couple of our players. We never did that. It’s part of what happened. Why it happened I don’t know. We had the better team at the time.” He also called the Packers “dirtier than dirt,” and called them the Red Bay Packers. “They don’t like us, and we don’t like them. That’s the way football is supposed to be played. I didn’t know it was supposed to be buddy-buddy.”

“Intimidation is a fact in these games,” Stills added. “It’s something everyone tries to get on their side. I think we intimidated their offense, to hold them the way we did. I think they intimidated our offense to hold them to zip. It’s not dirty at all. We throw punches and kick and fight, but we’ve got pads to protect us and it’s within a limit.”

Dan Hampton, the Bears’ Hall of Fame defensive end, put it this way, “It was a long time ago. There was a lot of bad blood, and it was fostered by both head coaches. Unashamedly.”

The rivalry between the Packers and Bears is heating up again. The two teams are fighting for first place in the division and maybe even the top seed in the conference. Bears head coach Ben Johnson fired a volley when he was introduced as the team’s head coach, telling reporters how much he enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur when he was with the Lions. But as intense as the rivalry may get in the coming years, it will never match the intensity and questionable play we saw when Gregg and Ditka went head-to-head.

 

 

 

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