Mike Ditka was a Hall of Fame player and he took the Bears to a Super Bowl as coach.
But that was in 1985.
So, it takes the Bears organization almost 30 years to decide to pull the trigger and retire the number? Why now? Is Ditka dying?
I did some reading and it seems the Bears are not going to retire any more numbers after this one, since they lead the NFL in retired numbers.
OK. So they have a ton of retired numbers, and maybe they didn’t want to retire any more. But then, they decide to?
Ditka only played 6 seasons in a Bears uniform, so I can see why the Bears would hesitate to retire it. He won a SB with the Cowboys as a player and assistant coach, so he had ties to another organization…
So what caused the bears, after all this time, to do it?
And would he have has his number retired if
A) the Bears had won a SB AFTER Super Bowl XX? and/or
B) if he still wasn’t so visible on the NFL studio shows? (I think it’s Fox, but could be wrong)
This just strikes me as strange timing… What do Bear fans think?
My understanding is that there was a fair amount of bad blood between Ditka and the Bears after they fired him as head coach (after the '92 season). It sounds like a fair amount of that was Ditka vs. Mike McCaskey (Halas’s grandson).
It also sounds like the Bears have been trying to mend fences with Ditka in recent years, and this is probably at least part of it.
Ditka is generally seen as one of the first of the great modern tight ends, and would be undoubtedly seen as one of the top players in Bears history, even if he hadn’t coached the team. However, I tend to agree – it was his coaching tenure with the Bears that cemented his image as an icon in Chicago, and had he not coached the Bears to the Super Bowl, I kind of doubt that his number would have been retired.
Have other NFL teams retired numbers for achievements mainly as a coach? MLB managers wear uniforms with numbers on them, so it makes sense to retire numbers for them. (On the Yankees, for example, Casey Stengel has his number retired as a manager only, having never played for them.)
What recognition if any do NFL teams give for coaches that never played?
Yes, it is a good article but the linked video is what needs to be seen. Currently, McMahon is showing signs of dementia.
Ditka’s departure from the Bears wasn’t smooth. Also, there were questions about his character, particularly gambling. I guess time heals all wounds. Ditka at his best personified the Bears and Chicago. The wounds have mostly healed and he gets his due for his longevity in football as a player, coach and announcer. It’s a cumulative thing.
That’s a decent article, but the author is way the heck off with this sentence. Dent, Hampton, and Singletary’s numbers were never retired.
Dent’s 95 is currently worn by Cheta Ozougwu, Hampton’s 99 is being worn by Shea McClellin, and Singeltary’s 50 has not been used since his retirement until this year and is being worn by James Anderson.
This is a lot of numbers retired by the Bears but I am OK with it seeing as how it’s the only receiver number retired (they still have 11-19, 43-49, and 80-88 available for their WRs and tight ends) and that it’s also about his legacy as a coach. The Bears say this is going to be the last number they retire.
Funny you brought the fact up that the other numbers mentioned were never retired. I could have sworn I saw someone wearing 95 and 99 in a Bears uniform, but I figured that the person who wrote the article would have done the research. Since i’m not a Bears fan, what did I know? Apparently, i knew more than the author! That’s just bad reporting AND bad editing. that literally takes 5 seconds to search on google.
If you look at whose numbers the Bears have retired, Walter Payton is the only player who started his career after 1966 (and, thus, is the only member of the Super Bowl Bears with his number retired).
It’s also interesting to note that at least one, if not two, of the numbers were retired for sentimental reasons, rather than on-field performance – Brian Piccolo, for certain, but possibly also Willie Galimore (a good, but maybe not great, halfback, who died in a car crash during training camp in 1964).