My rundown of the thankless exercise the Chicago Bears paid Don Pierson and Dan Pompei to do, the ranking of 100 greatest Bears continues. If you missed 100-76, it’s here. 1
75. Akiem Hicks, DT, 2016 – present
Akiem is pretty awesome, and the Bears got him because the Patriots and their big brained, personality deficient head coach decided he could do without him. Well, hah! All the Pats have done without Hicks is go to three Super Bowls and win two of them. Oh, never mind. They should have kept him anyway, and they didn’t, and it’s turned out great for the Bears to have an effective tackle who can stuff the run and rush the passer, and it never gets old watching him toss offensive linemen aside like they’re nothing.
74. Kyle Long, G, 2013 – present
The Bears were mocked when they took Long in the first round of the 2013 draft, not because he wasn’t good, but because nobody but Phil Emery had a first-round grade on him, so they likely could have gotten him with their second round pick. Long was good immediately, and he’s so huge it’s hard to believe he was a high school baseball stud, drafted by the White Sox, but didn’t sign, went to Florida State to play baseball, got a DUI, dropped out of FSU, and started his college football career late.
With the Bears he’s played both guard positions, and got moved to tackle right before the season opener in 2015 in a Bears Sneak Attack™. Hah! Those Packers never saw it coming!2 Then he moved back to guard. He made the Pro Bowl his first three years, and has been battling weird injuries ever since. In short, when he plays he’s really good.
73. Tommie Harris, DT, 2004-2010
Speaking of injuries, the only reason Tommie Harris was around when the Bears picked 14th in 2004 because team doctors around the league cautioned that his history of knee and back injuries would shorten his career. What they failed to factor in was that Tommie was awesome, and five or six years of awesome is better than 10 or 12 years of just OK. He was a dominant force in Lovie Smith’s defense and was having his most destructive season in 2006 but tore his hamstring clean off his leg at mid-season and missed the rest of the year, the playoffs, and the Super Bowl. But when he was healthy he was a true force.
72. Mark Carrier, S, 1990-1996
The Bears wanted Junior Seau in the 1990 draft, but the Chargers took him with the fifth pick, so they settled for his teammate at USC, safety Mark Carrier. Carrier was the NFC Defensive Rookie of the Year in ’90 and had 10 interceptions. He’d play five more years for the Bears and total 10 more, while making three Pro Bowls. He was a good player, but a step or two slower than would have been ideal.
71. Kevin Butler, K, 1985-1995
The Bears used a fourth round pick on Butler in 1985, which I’m sure really excited Mike Ditka, given his fondness for kickers. But Butler was one of the best picks the Bears ever made. He led the NFL in scoring as a rookie (thanks, in no small part to the Bears league-leading 51 touchdowns) and was a reliable kicker for more than a decade in Chicago. The 144 points he scored in ’85 were a rookie record that stood until 2014 when it was broken by the Eagles’…wait, no, this can’t be right…Cody Parkey? Oh, bullshit. Butt-head made 73% of his field goal attempts for the Bears, which doesn’t seem that outstanding, but it was in large part to the fact he was only 16-of-42 (38%) from 50 yards plus. If you got the ball inside the opponents’ 32, Butler was going to make it 78% of the time. By comparison, Adam Vinatieri has made 87% of his kicks from inside 50 yards in his 23 year career and 65% from 50-plus. Wow, Adam Vinatieri’s a lot better than Kevin Butler. Never mind.
70. Matt Suhey, FB, 1980-1989
Suhey was a fullback back when that actually meant something. He was a tough blocker, a good receiver and he was good for two carries and seven yards every game, whether you needed it or not. He scored just one postseason touchdown, and I’m sure you know what game that was in.
69. Bill Wade, QB, 1961-1966
Bill Wade was…fine. He was the quarterback on the 1963 NFL Champions, though he didn’t have a particularly good game. He went 10-for-28 for 138 yards. For his career he threw more interceptions (134) than touchdowns (124). He was only a full-time starter for the Bears in four seasons, which included two good years (1962 and 1963), one average year (1961) and a 2-8 disaster in 1964. The only reason he’s on this list is because the Bears have a long history of shitty quarterbacks and he’s one of the least shitty.
68. Dick Barwegen, G, 1950-1952
Fenger High product Dick Barwegan played only three years for the Bears but was All-Pro all three years. So, that’s pretty impressive. But three years gets you on the list?
67. Ed O’Bradovich, DE, 1962-1971
Most of us probably only know OB from the unhinged postgame radio show he did with Doug Buffone for years. You didn’t get any coherent analysis, so they were really only fun to listen to when the Bears lost, which for the last few years of their show was quite often. O’Bradovich was known to be nuts on the field, and this NFL Films segment on him does little to dispel it.
66. Mike Hartenstein, DE, 1975-1986
Hartenstein was a very hairy part of the Buddy Ryan defenses from 1978 to 1985 and had 12 sacks in 1983 and seven in 1984. We don’t know how many he had from 1975 to 1981 because the sack wasn’t an official stat in the NFL, so we’ll just guess he had 1,000.
65. Dick Gordon, WR, 1965-1971
Gordon had one really good season, 1970 when Bears’ QB Jack Conannon had a brief bout of competence. Gordon caught 71 passes (he never caught more than 43 in any other season) for 1,026 yards (he never had more than 610 in any other year) and 13 receiving TDs (never more than five in any other season.) He was the seventh round pick in the same 1965 draft where the Bears got Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers. That’s nearly as good as the time Mark Hatley got John Allred, Bob Sapp and Darnell Autry in the same draft.
64. James Williams, T, 1991-2002
The Big Cat was signed as an undrafted free agent defensive tackle out of tiny little Cheney University, was converted to offensive tackle in 1993 and turned into a stalwart on the o-line for nine years starting in 1994. That’s pretty incredible. Contrast that with the guy they picked with their first round choice that year, the immortal bust Stan Thomas from Texas.
63. Mike Brown, S, 2000-2008
The Bears have had a lot of good safeties in their history, but if not for his propensity to get hurt and miss large portions of seasons, Mike Brown might have been the best one. Well, him or Chris Conte. Anyway, when he was able bodied he was a menace to offenses and will always be remembered for this:
62. Robbie Gould, K, 2005-2015
Robbie’s been an extremely accurate kicker in his career, and was, for a few years the most accurate kicker in NFL history. He’s become sainted since the Bears dumped him after the 2015 season mostly because they haven’t been able to adequately replace him. He latched on with the Giants in 2016 and has spent the last two years in San Francisco and over those three years he’s made an absurd 82 of 85 (96%) field goals. Holy shit. He’s refused to sign a long-term deal with the Niners and is trying force his way back to the Bears, but San Francisco has put the franchise tag on him, and it’s all fairly ridiculous. No matter what he does the rest of the way, we’re all just going to remember his “I’m playing to feed my family,” crack when the Phil Emery regime refused to negotiate a new contract with him during the 2013 season.
61. Willie Gallimore, HB, 1957-1963
The Tarik Cohen of his era, Gallimore was a run-pass threat at running back who averaged 4.5 yards per carry and 13.8 yards per reception for his career. Are those good numbers? Those seem like good numbers. Willie “The Wisp” was tragically killed in a car accident in 1964. And wait until you hear how George Halas found out about him:
60. Khalil Mack, DE, 2018 – present
This is where I should write how ridiculous it is that after just one season Khalil Mack is 60th on this all-time great Bears list. It is. He should be higher. There are men you make exceptions for, and Khalil is one of those men. When the Bears traded for him in training camp last year they knew they were getting an impact pass rusher at the height of his powers. They knew he was going to be good. And he was even better than they hoped.
59. Julius Peppers, DE, 2010-2013
Peppers spent most of what is surely a Hall of Fame career with two stints in Carolina (and we’ll just pretend the three years in Green Bay never happened), but he signed a four year deal with the Bears in 2010 and all he did was record three interceptions, 10 forced fumbles, seven recovered fumbles, hit the quarterback 52 times and record 37.5 sacks. He was still really good when they inexplicably let him go. This franchise blows. Why do we like them so much?
58. Wally Chambers, DT, 1973-1977
In his four years with the Bears, Wally was All-Pro three times. He missed most of 1977 with a knee injury, the Bears said he didn’t try to rehab it hard enough so he sued them and they traded him to Tampa Bay for a first round draft pick. What a lousy deal, right? Well, they used the pick to draft Dan Hampton, who is likely the best Bears’ defensive lineman of all time, and Wally was out of football a year later.
57. Jim Osborne, DT, 1972-1984
A seventh round pick out of Southern in 1972 he played 13 years on the defensive line for the Bears and retired…the year before they won the Super Bowl. Ouch, babe.
56. Roosevelt Taylor, DB, 1961-1969
He had nine interceptions in 1963 and I think every other player on that team has already been on this list.
55. Johnny Lujack, QB, 1948-1951
He played defensive back as a rookie and had eight interceptions, oh and he was the kicker, too and made 44 of 46 extra points. In his first season as quarterback he threw six touchdown passes in a win over the then-Chicago Cardinals and for an NFL record 468 yards. In 1950 he set an NFL record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback with 11, a record that stood until 1978 when Steve Grogan broke it. At the ripe old age of 26 he retired and went back to Notre Dame to be an assistant coach under Frank Leahy. What the fuck? That’s how important the NFL was back then, it was a better gig to be a college assistant than a star pro player.
54. Ed Brown, QB/P, 1954-1961
Brown got drafted twice in 1952, once by the Bears and once by US Marine Corps. After serving in Korea he signed with the Bears and I have no idea why he’s on this list at all. Sure, he was the quarterback for the Bears in the 1956 title game, the infamous ‘Sneakers Game’ blowout loss at Yankee Stadium to the Giants, but Brown’s best season came in 1963 for the Steelers. In his eight years with the Bears he threw 63 touchdown passes and 88 interceptions. He did lead the league in punts with 64 in 1959 and in getting his punts blocked in 1960.
53. Jim McMahon, QB, 1982-1988
As an impressionable youth in the 1980s, Jim McMahon was the coolest guy ever. He showed up for his post-draft news conference with a beer, he wore sunglasses all the time because he once stuck a fork in eye as a kid, he broke so many passing records at BYU that one of the records was actually for most passing records broken, and when he was healthy (which was never often enough) the Bears had a real goddamned quarterback for the first time in our lives. He won a Super Bowl, and if all of that wasn’t legend enough, he did this:
52. Joe Kopcha, G, 1929-1935
Uh…sure, why not?
51. Keith Van Horne, T, 1983-1993
He was the non-Jimbo Covert tackle on the ’85 Bears and was married to Eleanor Mondale for a year.
The ones they got wrong
Ed Brown (54) seems dubious, especially that high on the list. I’m not even sure that Joe Kopcha is a real guy.