Resurgent Bears have legendary ’85 team’s attention

Ben Johnson has galvanized and energized a football team and a football city that has forever revered the Mike Ditka-Buddy Ryan Super Bowl champion ’85 Bears.

It is way too premature for a modern-day choreography of the “Super Bowl Shuffle” with the hated Packers defending Lambeau Field on Sunday, but the ’25 Bears have awakened echoes of a long lost yesteryear as a championship-starved city bears down again.

“We still have our Bear tickets, so I have all my friends back in Chicago, now they want my tickets,” ’85 Bears linebacker and former Commanders coach Ron Rivera told Serby Says, and chuckled. “They’re club seats, we’ve had ’em for well over 25 years or whatever it is. We only sell ’em for face value, and we let them use them. That’s been cool, it really has, to see the city being reenergized ’cause that’s a great sports city. When all’s good in the world, that means the Bears win.”

Johnson, the rookie head coach, is no grizzly former Bear as Ditka was, and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen is not as cantankerous and combative as Ryan was, and QB Caleb Williams is not nearly as rebellious and irreverent as Jim McMahon was back in the day. But if Da 2025 Bears keep winning, they will be reminded even more how Chicago embraces its sports heroes.