The NFL has always been viewed as one of eras. It’s been around for so long that this is the best way to help define the players and teams involved. There is the leather helmets era. The war between the leagues era and of course the Super Bowl era. It is in that vast latter portion where the greatest Chicago Bears playoff upset occurred.
The Bears too have been a team separated by eras. There was the most glorious in their modern history of the 1980s. One of the greatest defense arguably in NFL history, a Super Bowl championship, and the crowning of the greatest running back there ever was in Walter Payton. As that era drew to a close though, most fans prefer to fast forward to the 2000s with Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester.
This is because the 1990s are widely viewed as one of the bigger disappointments in Bears history. A mini dark age. After making the playoffs twice in 1990 and 1991, things pretty much dried up. By the end of 1992, Mike Ditka was fired as head coach and Mike Singletary had retired. Dave Wannstedt, a former defensive coordinator for the world champion Dallas Cowboys was hired to carry things into the next era.
These days his tenure is mostly remembered for never having a double-digit win season and the ugly 4-12 finishes prior to the end of the decade. Though Wannstedt is widely viewed as one of the bigger flops in Bears coaching history, he does deserve credit for the miracle he pulled off that strange season in 1994.
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Greatest Chicago Bears playoff upset started at QB
Chicago knew that if they were going to get things turned around after two-straight losing seasons, an upgrade at quarterback was needed. They didn’t half-ass it. Free agency became a thing for the first time that offseason. The Bears took advantage by signing not one but two QBs on the market. Completely revamping the entire position.
Their primary target was veteran Erik Kramer. His story was a fascinating one. His first NFL stint had ended after just one year in 1987. He then spent three seasons up in the Canadian Football League. Then in 1991, he was given a chance by the Detroit Lions. It was there he developed a reputation for steadiness and solid execution.
Twice in 1991 and 1993, the Lions were floundering towards the second half of the season. Both times Kramer was called off the bench to become the starter. Both times he led them to the playoffs.
The other one they secured was a bit of a throwback. Steve Walsh was mostly known in those days as a “game manager.” His best years were spent in college at Miami where he won a national championship in 1987. Later he was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys and split time with Troy Aikman as the starter in 1989 (yes, seriously).
Walsh showed enough to where Dallas saw an opportunity to cash in the next season. He was traded to the New Orleans Saints for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round picks. While it wasn’t pretty at times, Walsh did what was asked of him. He went 6-5 as a starter, getting the Saints to the playoffs. He even got a measure of revenge on his former team, knocking Dallas out of the final postseason spot in the NFC.
Walsh and Kramer would make an ideal combination given their shared experiences as both starters and backups.
Identity crisis
Kramer was quickly named the starter by Wannstedt before the season began. Things started well. Chicago cruised by Tampa Bay in the opener at Soldier Field. Kramer threw two touchdown passes and completed 72% of his passes. The defense also held the Buccaneers to just nine points in a 21-9 victory. There was optimism that this team might be able to do something.
Unfortunately, those hopes were put on ice the next week. Bears fans got a jarring reminder that this Bears defense wasn’t the one they’d grown used to in the 1980s. Most of the old guard was long gone. They went up to Philadelphia in Week 2 and saw Randall Cunningham dissect them for 311 yards and three touchdowns. Kramer threw three as well, but it wasn’t enough.
Chicago fell to 1-1 and it was becoming difficult to know for sure which team they were. Thankfully an answer wasn’t long in coming. Week 3 would see them return home to face off with the division rival Minnesota Vikings. A team many felt was rising to become one of the best in the conference and a legitimate Super Bowl contender.
They would make a good barometer for determining who the Bears really were.
Disaster strikes
It didn’t take long for them to get an answer. Minnesota systematically dismantled the Bears. After a scoreless 1st quarter, they seized control of the game with 10 points going into the half. Then in the 3rd quarter, the wheels well and truly came off. Minnesota kicked a field goal on their first drive. Then Curtis Conway fumbled on the ensuing kickoff.
Vikings quarterback Warren Moon then found Jake Reed on the next play for a touchdown, pushing the score to 20-0. Kramer desperately tried to respond on the Bears’ first series. He engineered a good drive that reached the Minnesota 22-yard line, but then ruined it with two crucial mistakes. First was a delay of game penalty that turned 2nd and 7 into a 2nd and 12.
The other was an ill-advised pass that Vikings rookie corner Dewayne Washington intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Things were out of hand at that point. Yet the worst was still to come for Kramer. On the next series, he again drove the Bears into Vikings territory. This time though he was sacked on 3rd and 5 to force a punt.
Nobody knew it at the time except Kramer himself, but that play had resulted in a slight separation of his throwing shoulder. Not that it mattered at that point. Minnesota rolled to a 42-14 victory. Wannstedt put the disaster in proper context after the game.
“We got whipped in all areas. I am embarrassed. We’ve got to regroup and somehow get this thing back on track. It wasn’t any one person, it wasn’t any one phase.”
A fateful decision
Kramer held out hope that he might be able to play through his injury. However, the pain didn’t subside enough during the week. So Wannstedt made the decision to go with Walsh as the starter in New York against the Jets. This was exactly the reason the Bears had signed him. They felt his experience and calm under pressure could help.
One thing though was they’d have to make a concerted effort to get back to “Bears football.” Walsh wasn’t going to carry them by passing a lot. They needed to put a greater emphasis on running the football. Hopefully doing so would also help out the defense. Chicago hadn’t run for more than 66 yards in any of their first three games.
This fundamental shift in philosophy worked out. The Bears ran for 104 yards in New York. The defense forced three turnovers and Walsh protected the ball well enough in a 19-7 win. That victory became two-in-a-row. Then three. Suddenly the Bears were 4-2 going into the bye week. Momentum was building. Wannstedt felt comfortable that the time was right to go back to a now healthy Kramer.
While that may have been true, he picked the wrong opponent to do it against. Kramer’s former team the Detroit Lions knew him well and how to defend what he did best. They intercepted him three times, claiming a 21-16 victory. The next week against Green Bay, it hit rock bottom. In a span of three drives between the 1st and 2nd quarters, he threw two interceptions and lost a fumble.
Wannstedt went back to Walsh in the second half. It would remain that way for the rest of the season.
A one-sided rivalry
The true roots of the upset were planted on December 1st. Chicago had bounced back from their two tough losses to win four-straight. Walsh had returned and so had the formula that kept working for them. He managed the game. Lewis Tillman and Raymont Harris ran the ball persistently and the defense played hard and aggressive. Going into their rematch with the Vikings in Minnesota, they felt like they were a different team.
It sure didn’t seem that way at the start as Dewayne Washington picked up right where he left off, intercepting a Walsh pass and returning it for a touchdown. The difference though came on the next series when Walsh, unfazed by the mistake, responded with a touchdown pass to tie the game. Things pretty much went that way the rest of the afternoon. The two teams trading big plays and the lead.
The end result though was the same. After forcing overtime on a Kevin Butler field goal, the Bears saw Moon find Cris Carter on the second play from scrimmage for 65 yards and the winning touchdown. It may have been a closer game, but the feeling of defeat hurt just as much.
One last push for redemption
It was a brutal defeat. Chicago really thought they could’ve won. So for it to end like that was crushing. Nobody would’ve blamed them if things fell apart over the final three games. It almost did. The next week, the Bears were thoroughly dismissed by the Packers 40-3. That dropped their record to 8-6. Most believed they were done by that point. No magic seemed left.
The Bears weren’t ready to die yet. They summoned every bit of effort and courage they had and delivered a crucial victory at Soldier Field against the Los Angeles Rams 27-13. As had been the case all year long, it was their dedicated rushing attack (163 yards, 2 TDs) and strong defensive performance that carried the day.
Despite losing to the Patriots in the season finale, the Bears had done enough to secure the final wild card spot in the playoffs. The only question was who they’d play. It would either be the Packers or the Vikings as both teams had a shot to win the NFC Central title.
A Packer win and Vikings loss would send them to Green Bay. A Vikings loss and Packer win would earn a return trip to Minnesota. If both teams won or lost, the Vikings held the better record. Sure enough, the Packers defeated Tampa Bay but Minnesota took down San Francisco as well. The Bears would have another chance at redemption for their painful losses earlier in the year.
On paper, the Bears had no chance
Unsurprisingly, the Vikings opened as heavy favorites to win the game. People need to understand the context of this matchup. Minnesota had already beaten them twice, but a look at the rosters would grant even more clarity. The 1994 Bears may have been one of the worst rosters to ever reach the postseason. They didn’t have a single player make the Pro Bowl that year. It truly was a team that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Minnesota had Warren Moon, Cris Carter, and John Randle. All three would end up with gold jackets in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This wasn’t counting other future great players like Qadry Ismail, Robert Smith, and Todd Steussie. This was a loaded group that was far more talented than their 10-6 record indicated.
The Bears had one thing in their favor though. Moon had suffered a knee injury two weeks prior in Detroit. This forced him to leave the game and miss the finale against the 49ers. So he was coming into the contest both hurt and rusty. The man himself insisted he’d be ready though.
“I’ll be fine in two weeks; one week might be a little iffy,”‘ Moon said at the beginning of last week. “I don’t have a lot of next weeks. I can’t be waiting on next week.”
Crafting the perfect game plan
The Bears were confident too. They felt they had the measure of Minnesota at that point. They had two games worth of experience playing against them and began to forge a game plan specifically designed to take advantage of their every weakness. None more so than the Vikings’ aggressive defense and their need for sacks.
Walsh explained how the Bears coaches laid things out.
“When we prepared against them, (offensive coordinator) Ron Turner and Tony Wise, our line coach, said, ‘Steve, you’ve got 2.9 seconds to get rid of the ball.’ So in practice, they would blow a horn, blow a whistle. So it was literally get back on the fifth step and the ball had to go.”
For the Bears defense? Their goal was equally focused. They had two jobs. They had to stop the run and they had to win the turnover battle. Minnesota had beaten them the previous two times in that fashion. They ran for 212 yards in the first meeting and 100 in the second. Each time they turned it over twice, which equaled to and was less than Chicago each time.
The same old story?
There’s an old saying. “Great plans never survive contact with the enemy.” This was the case for the Bears. The game couldn’t have started much worse for them on that New Years Day in the Metrodome. After the defense managed to force a Vikings punt on the opening series, Walsh and the offense prepared to enact their plan.
It did not go well.
Minnesota converted that sequence into a 29-yard field goal to take the lead. Incredible as it may sound, the worst of it was still to come. Just three plays later, it’ was Walsh’s turn to make a catastrophic mistake.
Two turnovers in a span of five offensive snaps. Everything that could’ve gone wrong did go wrong. The Vikings had the ball again at the Bears 39-yard line. A touchdown would break the game open and likely break Chicago’s spirits. However, there was still hope. The next series began to reveal something they’d thought was possible.
Moon was off his game.
After completing four of his first five throws, the 38-year old began to misfire. He missed a possible touchdown pass to Reed to end the previous drive. Then he couldn’t connect on his next two, creating a 3rd and 15 situation. Moon was then sacked by Trace Armstrong to force a punt.
Just like that, the momentum had begun to shift.
The long march
For the Bears offense, they had finally been able to settle themselves. They’d made their big mistakes and the score was still only 3-0. There was a big chance to take over control of the game. It was at this point they executed probably the best drive of the entire season. A 16-play marathon march that took a staggering 9 minutes and 11 seconds to go 80 yards, ending in a Tillman 1-yard touchdown.
Just like that, the Bears had the lead. The home crowd was stunned. Minnesota was struggling to find out what had happened. Not that they had much time to talk it over on the defense. After two quick runs that netted four yards, Moon’s next pass of the game was intercepted by linebacker Barry Minter. Suddenly all the disasters that haunted the Bears had shifted to the Vikings.
It was here where Walsh’s savvy as a quarterback truly showed itself. On the first play of the series off of the interception, he caught Randle with an offsides penalty on a hard count. Then he used the quick passing game plan that had worked so well the previous drive as a decoy, launching a 52-yard bomb to a wide open Jeff Graham. That would set up the Bears’ second touchdown of the quarter.
It was then a genuine fear began to grip the Vikings. They were in real danger of letting the game slip away. So they did what they had done all year. They leaned on their best players to stop the bleeding. Randle and the defense forced a Bears punt on their next series. Then Moon and Carter connected three times on the final Minnesota drive of the half including a four-yard touchdown, cutting the lead to 14-9 after a failed two-point conversion.
Too little, too late
Some in the building may have thought the Vikings had poised themselves for a comeback. It didn’t take the Bears long to inform them they were mistaken. In a four-play drive that covered 75 yards, Walsh hit on passes of 23 and 18 yards to Curtis Conway and Graham. Then it was Raymont Harris who delivered what ended up being the knockout blow of the game.
The determined run made it a 21-9 game. It was a crippling blow for Minnesota. To cut into the lead at the end of the first half as they did, only to give it right back at the start of the second? It had to be dispiriting. Even then though, they tried to fight back. Unfortunately, the problems with Moon continued to persist.
Two drives later, he capped a promising march from the Vikings 14-yard to the Bears 35 with an interception to cornerback Jeremy Lincoln. Still, Minnesota kept fighting. They quickly forced a Chicago three-and-out and would score with a 48-yard field goal, making it 21-12. It wasn’t a strong enough response though.
Walsh came right back on the next series, converting a 4th and 1 with a QB sneak and then finding Graham for a 21-yard touchdown. It was 28-12.
Defense and special teams close the door
Minnesota still had 12:42 left in the game. They knew if they could score quickly, they’d be right back in it. That is not how it went. The Vikings did end up scoring on the drive, but it took 19 plays and just shy of seven minutes to do so. Then to make it worse they again failed on the two-point conversion, keeping it 28-18.
Longtime Bears fan favorite Tom Waddle then recovered the ensuing onside kick.
Though Chicago went three-and-out on their next drive, they managed to chew a precious minute off the clock. It would be on the defense to make one more stop to put the game away. Minnesota went from their own 30 to the 46-yard line before they bogged down, facing 4th and 5. Moon found wide receiver Amp Lee one yard short of the sticks. As he turned to go for the first down, two Bears collided with him and the ball popped loose.
That play was the backbreaker. With three minutes left, the Vikings were down 35-18. Already in pain from his knee, Moon decided to sit for the final drive. Strong kickoff coverage led to Minnesota starting from their own 13. Backup Sean Salisbury managed to drive them out to the Chicago 46. He then found Reed for a 15-yard strike, but he too fumbled. The Bears recovered it to end the game.
It was the fourth Vikings turnover. Chicago’s defense had done what they’d set out to. They won the turnover battle (4-2) and held Minnesota to just 49 yards rushing. Walsh finished with a 107.3 passer rating while the Bears running game scored twice.
It truly was a total team effort. The last playoff victory the franchise would enjoy for 12 years. It was also the most unlikely and unexpected. A forgotten memory that deserves more reverence than it gets. A day where a group of nobodies taught a group of Hall of Famers the true meaning of “any given Sunday.”
