Emery Moorehead, tight end on Chicago Bears' Super Bowl-winning team, remembers Mike Ditka
Emery Moorehead was a tight end on the Super Bowl-winning 1985-1986 Chicago Bears. He shared his memories of his coach Mike Ditka after he died Friday at the age of 86.
Moorehead described Ditka as a "very emotional" person who brought his emotions to the team and the team, in turn, put those emotions into their play.
"You play yourself after the coach," he explained, and noted the irony that the Bears are set to the play the Green Bay Packers this weekend in Wisconsin, considering Ditka's long and fiery feud with the team.
"He had huge passion for the game," Moorehead said. "Everybody played at an emotional high every week because that's how coach felt."
Moorehead said Ditka's coaching was "my way or the highway," telling his players to give no quarter and take no prisoners.
"We had to play for our coach and we knew that every game and every practice was going to be a certain tempo and that's what was expected of us," he said.
After the Bears won and millions packed the city to celebrate, Ditka's praises were sung by the organization and the players during a celebratory rally.
"We have in Mike Ditka a coach who better than any other stands for the values of Papa Bear Halas," Bears owner George McCaskey said at the rally. "He stands for toughness, he stands for a joy in competing, and he hates like hell to lose — that's Mike Ditka."
Papa Bear Halas, was George S. Halas, the founder and longtime owner of the Bears and McCaskey's grandfather, who had died a little over two years earlier.
Then Moorehead along with Steve "Mongo" McMichael, Tom Thayer, Kevin Butler and Willie Gault took to the podium to address fans.
A slightly less shining moment for Moorehead after that Super Bowl was the loss of his championship ring.
"I lost it, I don't know what happened to it," he told CBS News Chicago. "It was a winter day, I had on gloves. I checked my mail, pulled the glove off and the ring disappeared."
He said the ring was lost for months; so long that he'd contacted the jewelers who made it, wondering if he could get a replacement. The reassured him that every Super Bowl ring is insured and he could get a replacement. But then the ring was found.
"In spring, when they were cleaning up the snow piles in my subdivision, a lady saw the ring on the ground," Moorehead said with a laugh. "Apparently it had been in a big snow pile for months."
He sent it to the jewelers, who cleaned it up and sent it back sparkling new.
"The next time my teammates saw me they said, 'How'd you get that ring so clean?'" he recalled with a laugh.
