The only worse blow to the bears than that ridiculously classless and dirty move, was Ditka's decision to replace a game managing QB in Tomczak, and instead start a midget who just joined the team.
He lost the team forever after that.
Terrific D and running game. All you needed was a QB to not lose it. And Ditka blew it.
Anyone who has heard the Bears players from that team talk about why they didn't win again knows Ditka was the primary reason. "Absurd"? Tell that to the players. To a man they say Ditka lost the team with the endorsements and the handling of the strike and the scab players.
Half the stories the players tell don't even line up with reality and what happened.
Here's what actually happened:
The week after the McMahon injury T-Suck started vs the Steelers. Threw 0 TD's and 2 INT's. He was terrible.
The week after that the Bears blew out the Bucs and Flutie got some mop up duty. T-Suck was ok.
T-Suck got hurt about 3 plays into the next game against Detroit. Flutie came in and played "meh". Bears win.
Flutie starts the next week against Dallas in part due to the T-Suck injury, plays really well, and the Bears win.
Ditka starts Flutie for the playoff game. Flutie didn't just get handed the starting job. On top of all this Fuller and T-Suck were abysmal in 1986. They combined for something like 4 TDs and 14 INT's. That's not game manager football.
The entire kicker to this is look at the career Flutie went on to have...compare that to the career of T-Suck, Fuller, etc. I'd say Ditka ended up being pretty much correct about Flutie. It's odd how this narrative is on it's head. Had Ditka run FLutie out of town people would look at Flutie's subsequent success as an indictment of Ditka...but in this current situation no one even acknowledges Ditka was right about Flutie.
McMahon was an asshat during this entire situation too. Actively turning the team against Flutie and decisions that coaches were making. That's not a great thing to do.
