I just wanted to share this bit of Bear's history with ya'll.
LAKE FOREST, Ill. After thrashing the Washington Redskins 73-0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game, the Bears entered the 1941 season with a special mystique.
According to Richard Whittinghams book, The Bears, a 75-Year Celebration, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Bert Bell predicted before the season that nobodys going to beat the Bears. Theyre simply the greatest football team ever assembled.
The Bears proved their dominance by scoring a NFL-record 396 points, averaging 36 points per game and becoming the first team in league history to pass for more than 2,000 yards in a season.
Chicago won games by margins of 49, 46, 35, 27 and 27 points in compiling a 10-1 record. Its only blemish was a 16-14 loss to the Green Bay Packers at Wrigley Field, which left the longtime rivals tied for first place atop the Western Division with identical records.
With the Eastern Division-champion New York Giants awaiting the winner, the Bears and Packers met at Wrigley Field in the NFLs first divisional playoff game. More than 60 years later, it remains the only post-season contest played between the fierce rivals.
The Bears stormed to a 30-7 halftime lead in trouncing the Packers 33-14 before a crowd of more than 43,000 fans. Hugh Gallarneau returned a punt 81 yards for a touchdown and George McAfee set a Bears post-season record that stood for 65 years by rushing for 119 yards. The game was played exactly one week after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Despite an unseasonably warm kickoff temperature of 47 degrees the following Sunday in Chicago, only 13,341 fansthe smallest crowd in the history of the NFL Championship Gameshowed up to see the Bears try to defend their league title against the Giants. Some felt that the small crowd was the result of the grim reality that the United States had entered World War II.
Fullback Norm Standlee ran for two touchdowns as the Bears outscored the Giants 28-3 in the second half, turning a 9-6 halftime lead into a 37-9 rout. McAfee also ran for a TD and Ken Kavanaugh returned a fumble 42 yards for another score.
The Bears became the first NFL team to win back-to-back titles since an official championship game was instituted by the league in 1933.
At the beginning of the 1941 season, the Bears were dubbed the Monsters of the Midway by a New York sportswriter. Also in 1941, the fight song Bear Down, Chicago Bears was introduced. It was written by Al Hoffman, who used the pseudonym Jerry Downs and is better known as the composer of If I Knew You Were Coming, Id Have Baked a Cake.
