When the Patriots released Steve McMichael in 1981, giving up on their 1980 third-round pick after only one year, coach Ron Erhardt added an insult on the defensive tackle’s way out the door.
According to McMichael, Erhardt told him: “We believe you’re part of the criminal element in the league.”
The Patriots didn’t like the hours McMichael kept or the places he kept them. They hated how he would go all out during workouts against guard John Hannah, who just had been christened “The Best Offensive Lineman of All Time” by Sports Illustrated on its Aug. 3, 1981, cover.
“I’d go ‘live’ against him to see how I could do against the very best,” McMichael told the Tribune’s Bill Jauss on Dec. 14, 1983. “John didn’t mind, but the coaches complained.”
McMichael returned to his hometown of Freer, Texas, “to start the rest of my life,” he said. The Bears called midway through the 1981 season and brought him on as a special teams player. He didn’t get much action on defense that season or in ’82, but he felt more at home than he had in New England.
That was thanks to three men in Chicago. Coach Mike Ditka encouraged his players to be themselves and didn’t keep tabs on them too closely as long as they practiced hard and produced on Sundays. Dan Hampton, one of the best defensive linemen in the league and equally adept as a tackle or an end, served as McMichael’s role model on and off the field. Defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan told his players to get after it on every snap — the way McMichael liked to practice and play.
Ditka and McMichael hit it off immediately as kindred spirits. Ditka pushed Ryan to insert McMichael into the starting lineup, and he advocated for him during and after his career.
“Steve transcended every era,” Dikta told the Tribune’s Rick Kogan on Aug. 28, 2005. “He could have played in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. What he had, he gave to me, all of it. There was never a down where he didn’t go all out.”
Hampton and McMichael, born one month apart in 1957, might as well have been brothers. The big, brash linemen — Hampton from Arkansas, McMichael from Texas — raised hell at all hours on and off the field and became the best tackle tandem in the league.
In McMichael and Phil Arvia’s 2004 book, “Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline,” he wrote: “I guess we got along because we were both country boys, small-towners, and had a lot in common. Thank God he was on the team at the time. He became my big brother, my guide through chaos, really.
“It especially motivated me in practice to dominate and kick ass. Impressing him was a big factor. I wanted to show him that I … fit in with what he considered important about playing football. Every guy who plays that smash-mouth brand of football is impressing other guys who do.”
Ryan was not as easy to win over. When McMichael joined the Bears, Ryan — who called players by their uniform number or a derogatory nickname until they proved they deserved better — asked him before his first practice whether he was in shape. McMichael responded that he regularly went jogging with his Great Dane.
“They worked my ass off,” McMichael wrote. “I was taking every rep. … So I was gassed after practice.”
As Ryan walked off the field, he remarked to McMichael: “(Expletive), 76, we shoulda hired the dog.”
Eventually, Ryan called McMichael “Tex,” a big upgrade. Hampton nicknamed McMichael “Mongo” after the dimwitted and violent yet lovable “Blazing Saddles” character played by Alex Karras. Eventually, Hampton changed McMichael’s moniker to “Ming the Merciless” after the “Flash Gordon” villain.
“‘Mongo’ was something Dan thought was funny,” McMichael wrote. “‘Ming’ was a sign of respect.”
McMichael moved into the starting lineup alongside Hampton in 1983 and produced immediately. Off the field he generally behaved like a professional wrestler, which he would become a dozen years later, even peppering his pronouncements by calling the person he was addressing “baby” or “brother.”
Trace Armstrong, McMichael’s teammate from 1989 to ’93, told John Mullin in his 2003 book, “Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline,” that McMichael “had this Hollywood style. He bought a Rolls-Royce convertible, red with white interior and a white top. … Here comes this red convertible, big guy driving with long hair flapping in the breeze, and this little chihuahua he’s holding as he’s driving. And the chihuahua’s got some kind of outfit on. That was vintage Ming.”
Mullin wrote: “Ming was a really intelligent guy. When he got on camera he understood that for notoriety, he had to push the envelope a little bit and he did. So he really developed a shtick and a persona that was his signature.”
McMichael gained revenge on the Patriots by helping the Bears beat them 46-10 in Super Bowl XX after the 1985 season, and his profile grew. Those who paid attention only to McMichael’s outlandish behavior missed the fact that he had become one of the game’s best defensive tackles. He was named first-team All-Pro in 1985 and ’87, second-team in 1986 and ’91, and to the Pro Bowl in 1986-87.
At 6-foot-2, 270 pounds, McMichael was smaller than the average tackle, but he thrived in Ryan’s system because of his strength and quickness. He was able to stuff the run, and he was one of the best pass rushers from the inside in NFL history.
McMichael recorded 10 or more sacks in 1984, ’88 and ’92. Since sacks became an official statistic in 1982, his career total of 95 ranks third among defensive tackles behind only John Randle’s 1371/2 and Warren Sapp’s 961/2. McMichael’s 921/2 sacks with the Bears rank second since the team began tracking the stat in 1970 behind only teammate Richard Dent’s 1241/2.
Armstrong played 15 NFL seasons as a defensive end with teammates who included Dent, Hampton and Mike Singletary with the Bears, Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor with the Dolphins and Charles Woodson and Rod Woodson with the Raiders. Those seven players combined for 51 Pro Bowl berths, 26 first-team All-Pro selections and five spots in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“Steve was the best football player I ever played with,” Amstrong told Mullin. “He didn’t have dominant ability, yet he was a dominant player for a long time. He did it by working at it. I played with Steve for five years and he never missed a practice.”
McMichael played 191 games for the Bears — consecutive if the 1987 strike games are dismissed — to pass Walter Payton’s team record of 190. He still ranks second, tied with Olin Kreutz behind long snapper Patrick Mannelly’s 245.
On Aug. 4, 1994, the Tribune’s Don Pierson wrote: “To play the perilous inside position for such a long time at such a consistently high level puts McMichael in the company of Merlin Olsen and not many others.”
McMichael never came out of the lineup despite a collection of battered body parts, including knees that required eight operations. It was hard to get McMichael to even miss practice.
“Practice was a joy, baby,” McMichael wrote. “I loved every aspect of the game. Preparing for it and playing it are the same. When they say I even loved wind sprints, it’s kind of the truth. … Pushing through the limits, that’s what makes the games easy.”
McMichael’s athleticism was underrated to start, and his tireless workouts ensured he didn’t lose much of it as he aged. In high school he lettered in six sports: football, basketball, baseball, track, tennis and golf.
“Every athletic event they had, I did,” McMichael told the Tribune’s Robert Markus on Dec. 12, 1991. “I think it’s very important for a young kid to play all of them. The skills you learn will lead you into the one you like.”
Vince Tobin, who replaced Ryan as the Bears defensive coordinator in 1986, called McMichael one of the most intelligent players he ever coached.
“He’s extremely smart,” Tobin told Markus. “He studies film; he reads offensive players. He has the ability to know if a guy is pulling, whether he’s going to block him left or right, whether it will be a pass or run, before the ball is snapped.”
McMichael added: “Quickness is deciphering the play and going instead of standing there waiting for it to happen. … You’re not born with that. Nobody knows the nuances of the game until he takes the time to learn.”
In 2014, Pierson ranked McMichael the fourth-best defensive lineman in Bears history, behind Doug Atkins, Hampton and Dent. At No. 18, McMichael is the highest-ranked player on the Tribune’s list of the top 100 Bears who is not in the Hall of Fame, just ahead of No. 19 Devin Hester, No. 21 Jimbo Covert and No. 23 Jay Hilgenberg.
McMichael played his last season for the Packers in 1994, starting all 16 games after the Bears released him rather than pay his $1 million salary.
He joined World Championship Wrestling as a broadcaster in 1995 and became a wrestler a few months later. In 2001 McMichael was ejected from Wrigley Field when he followed his rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by criticizing umpire Angel Hernandez.
In 2013 he ran for mayor of Romeoville and earned 39 percent of the vote in a loss to incumbent John Noak.
McMichael, now 61, has been in and out of local broadcasting as TV and radio stations hire and fire him for being outrageous. His Wikipedia entry contains 230 words on his college and pro football careers and 855 on his time as a wrestler.
If McMichael’s personality and antics overshadowed his fine play for 13 seasons with the Bears and the 26 years since, he figures it’s all part of the same package, and it could not have happened any place else.
“Thank God New England got rid of me,” McMichael told the Tribune’s Bob Verdi on Oct. 14, 1984. “Some teams, they want you to have a certain image. Other teams, like this one, they just want you to get down and dirty. … I’m really proud to be a Bear.
“The Patriots, yeah, they thought I was a little weird. And I guess I am. But here they don’t care, long as you play hard. … The town, the coach, the team — it’s Steve McMichael. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
As part of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the Bears’ 100th season, the Tribune’s Bears reporters and editors ranked the 100 best players in franchise history. Click here for the full list.
