Mike Ditka, Bears Legend and Hall of Fame Tight End, Dies at 86

Mike Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end and Super Bowl-winning head coach who became the loud, cigar-chomping face of Chicago football, died Friday at 86, The Daily Wire reported. No cause of death was immediately released.

Born Michael Dyczko in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, Ditka carried the lunch-bucket ethos of a Western Pennsylvania steel town into a professional football career that spanned more than three decades and made him one of the few figures to win a Super Bowl as a player, an assistant coach, and a head coach.

From Aliquippa to the NFL

The Bears drafted Ditka fifth overall in 1961, and he almost immediately rewrote what the tight end position could be. Before Ditka, the position amounted to a sixth offensive lineman; he turned it into a receiving threat, posting 56 catches for 1,076 yards and 12 touchdowns as a rookie — still one of the great rookie seasons by a tight end — and taking Rookie of the Year honors.

His signature moment as a player came in December 1963, with the Bears trailing the Pittsburgh Steelers in a game that mattered. Ditka caught a short pass and barreled more than 60 yards, shedding six or seven defenders along the way before being dragged down. The run set up a game-tying field goal, keeping Chicago alive in its eventual march to the 1963 NFL Championship over the New York Giants.

Ditka made five Pro Bowls in Chicago, but his playing career there ended on bitter terms in 1967 after a contract dispute with owner George Halas, prompting his famous line that Papa Bear threw nickels around like manhole covers. He later played for the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys, where he caught a touchdown in Super Bowl VI, retired as a player in 1972, and entered the Hall of Fame in 1988 as the first tight end ever inducted.

The 1985 Bears and a Coaching Legend

His biggest chapter in Chicago came as a coach. Halas brought Ditka back in 1982 to lead the Bears, and three years later he had one of the NFL’s most fearsome teams. The 1985 Bears went 15-1, powered by Buddy Ryan’s ferocious defense and Walter Payton and quarterback Jim McMahon on offense, and rolled past the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.

Ditka managed a locker room of outsized personalities with methods that were sometimes unconventional. When McMahon, who had been hospitalized with a neck and back problem, pestered Ditka on the sideline during a Thursday night game in Minnesota in September 1985, Ditka finally sent him in. McMahon threw a touchdown on his first pass, another moments later, and three in roughly seven minutes as Chicago pulled away.

Along the way, Ditka used 300-pound rookie defensive lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry as a goal-line fullback and embraced the team’s “Super Bowl Shuffle” phenomenon. He branded his bruising squad the “Grabowskis” and contrasted them with the flashier, softer teams he called the “Smiths” — a framing the city adopted as its own.

Ditka’s tenure included a screaming halftime dispute with Ryan in Miami, regular clashes with McMahon on the sideline, and a 1988 heart attack that would have ended most careers. He was back coaching 11 days later.

A Second Act and a Pop-Culture Life

Ditka later coached the New Orleans Saints, where he traded an entire draft class for running back Ricky Williams, and eventually became a fixture on ESPN. His mustache, dark sunglasses, and sweater-vest look made him an easy target for parody, and “Saturday Night Live” turned him into a pop-culture institution through the “Bill Swerski’s Superfans” sketches, in which George Wendt and Chris Farley worshipped “Da Bears” and “Ditka.” The running joke held that Ditka could beat a hurricane in a fight, and he played along with it for years.

Ditka was, by the account of those who covered him, the last of a certain kind of football figure: unfiltered, unafraid, and willing to take on any fight put in front of him.

Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/mike-ditka-ultimate-gridiron-tough-guy-dies-at-86