Chicago Bears play the L.A. Rams Sunday, in Chicago.

Last time that happened in a playoff game was 30 years and six days ago—the NFL Championship Game, in the Bears’ fabled 1985 season.

I was 16, and in a Sioux City, Iowa adolescent drug treatment center. (Nancy Reagan was saying “Just say no” to drugs. Panicked parents were just saying yes to sending their kids to insurance-covered chemical dependency treatment for children who had drunk less than most alcoholics had spilled on their neckties.)

In any case, I remember watching the Bears’ first playoff game in the, against the Giants in the treatment center’s community room, but I missed this one somehow. Must have been in group therapy or something. Anyway: Yes, I know how it ends, but I’m watching it on YouTube, pretending I don’t. (CBS oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek sure didn’t. He somehow picked the Rams to win 19-16.)

Rams achieve nothing on their first drive in the howling Hawk—the name for Chicago’s winter wind—blowing 35 at kickoff.

Bears quarterback Jim McMahon takes what would be called a clear late hit nowadays. “That’ll clean out your sinuses!” John Madden says. And the Bears keep driving, already down to the Rams’ 16 yard line—from which McMahon runs the ball left, all the way into the end zone for a touchdown.

Afterward, McMahon struts around the sideline in a headband sporting the surname of league commissioner (Pete) “Rozelle,” in apparent protest of a $5,000 fine he’d received from the league office for wearing an Adidas headband the week before. “A great gag,” Rozelle said later of the Rozelle headband. “It broke me up.”

Rams punt again. They don’t appear to belong on the same field as the Bears. Yes, they have Eric Dickerson, but their quarterback is named Dieter Brock.

And now Walter Payton is goose-stepping down the right sideline, down to the Rams’ 29. Bears settle for a Kevin Butler field goal. Like a wind-chill factor, 10-0 feels like 20-0.

The Rams achieve their first first down through a forward-fumble by Dickerson. On the next third down, Bears linebacker Mike Singletary and Dickerson demonstrate what it would look like if one of the great running backs of all time ran square into a mailbox. Rams punt.

Walter Payton, a 10-year veteran of NFL abuse at this point, looks as good as he ever did, and picks up a Bearss first down. First quarter ends with the Bears up 10-0.

When that drive fizzles, a punter named Maury Buford comes in to punt. They don’t make NFL players named Maury anymore. 

Before I finish researching the Maurys, the Rams are punting it back.

And now Maury kicks it back to the Rams. Rams kick it back to the Bears. Bears kick it back to the Rams. This is like watching a glacier advance. 

You want to see a football game, watch a 1984 contest that I re-chronicled here a couple years ago, between these Bears and the Oakland Raiders. Here was Dick Enberg, at one point in the second quarter, talking about the Raiders’ quarterbacks: “[Marc] Wilson went out twice, once with a back injury, once with an injured thumb. And now [David] Humm, he went out once after a whack, you saw the bruise on the chin and they were checking his teeth, and now … hard to tell. The knee? … You start at the head and go down to the feet and you just say, ‘Anatomy.’” The Raiders’ third-string quarterback, punter Ray Guy? Refused to go in.

Finally, Eric Dickerson gets loose and picks up—nine yards on third and 10, and the Rams punt again. But “they’ll be encouraged going into halftime,” John Madden says, with uncharacteristic disingenuousness. “They’re starting to get some things going in their subtle way.” They’ve had one first down the entire half. Pretty subtle, indeed.

Rams have it back. Dieter Brock looks like a man standing in an alligator swamp throwing the ball into a jet engine. And the Rams punt again—and it bounces off a Bear! And the Rams recover, on the Bears’ 21 yard line! 

The amateur alligator-handler hands it to Dickerson, who gains four. The clock is down to 40 seconds. Another run for five, and it’s down to 21 seconds. And then they throw for the first down, and the clock runs out. An insanely bad bit of clock management—the Rams had a timeout that they never used—that further argues that the Rams have little more business playing in this game than the worst team in the NFC—that year, the 2-14 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

(A prediction, and a prayer: Tonight’s game will be more exciting than this contest.)

The Bears get the ball to start the second half and start driving with runs by Payton and fullback Matt Suey. But then old Maury comes in again, to do his thing. Between these two teams, this is the 11^th or 12^th punt of the game. A good thing they didn’t show us upstart drug fiends this game. It would have sent us all off the wagon. Hell, it’s making me question Dry January.

Rams start to drive but Dickerson fumbles it back to the Bears around midfield. 

Bears muster a drive. And with a six-yard McMahon right-rollout pass to Payton, convert a big fourth and six, down to the Rams’ 21. Then on second down, McMahon rolls to his left and hits wide receiver Willie Gault for a 22-yard touchdown. 

Bears lead 17-0. Feels like 30-0.

Wilber Marshall just rammed Henry Ellard so hard that Madden wants to hear the hit again. The sound of CTE.

Anyway:

And another exchange of punts. And another. And another.

The camera finds suburban Chicago native Bill Murray on the Bears’ sideline, wearing an old-timey leather football helmet.

The week before against Dallas, Eric Dickerson rushed for 248 yards. Now in the fourth quarter in Chicago, Dickerson has 44. Brock, meanwhile, is throwing, when he does, in all-out backpedaling retreat. And now he is eaten by William “Refrigerator” Perry.

As the Bears begin their next drive, it begins to snow. “I think this game has everything,” Madden begins, “I mean Chicago, and the Bears, and Soldier Field, and monsters, and big guys and tough guys in short sleeves, and snow and everything. The only thing wrong is they’ve got all that stuff, and artificial turf.”

Another exchange of punts.

The Rams are driving now in Bears territory, but seem to be content just to maybe try to score once—wait, Brock is sacked, fumbles, Wilber Marshall picks it up and runs it about 55 yards for a touchdown. 24-0. Feels like 73-0 (the score by which the Bears beat the Washington Redskins in 1940).

What must the weak-ass AFC Champion New England Patriots have thought, studying this massacre-by-smothering on game film? I wouldn’t have blamed them if they didn’t make the trip to New Orleans. 

The clock runs out and a huge cheer erupts from Soldier Field. This is a football town that’s never happier than when the Chicago Bears win a big game.

(And never sadder, as we just learned, than when they don’t.)