Sal has come out with a new book which appears to be a list of most overrated/underated in the NFL. On Mike and Mike this morning he lists the 85 Bears as the most overrated Super Bowl champion.

His rationale, well what he said on the show, was that he compared the 85 Bears to the 76 Raiders. Both lost only one game but according to Sal the Bears only beat Dieter Brock and the Rams and Tony Eason of the Patriots to win the SB, while the Raiders beat the Steel Curtain and Hall of famer Fran Tarkenton and the Vikings to win the SB.

He also said that the Bears were helped by playing in the third largest market and the characters on the team.

While you can argue if the Bears were the best SB team of all time, I think being called the most overrated is off the mark. The Bears did beat a pretty good Giants team in the playoffs (a team that won the SB the next year) and also took smashed some fine offensive teams that year, Montana and the 49ers, O'Brien and the Jets, White and the Cowboys, Theismann and the Redskins.

They scored over 450 points while giving up less than 200, and the next time a team is held to negative yards in the first half of a game, SB or regular season, let me know.

Coming from a luminary like Sal, this "analysis" isn't worth the time to complain about it.

Let me guess who his most underrated team was, 1980 Philadelphia Eagles?

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I had the same thought Hooty.

Yeah, I heard that as well and thought the guy was full of shit...

rating athletes is so overrated.

He was wrong on many of his under/over rated players.

The only one he nailed was Favre. I didn't realize how atrocious some of his negative statistics. Wow! Makes you wonder if GB might have won some more superbowls if they had a less selfish player back there.

yep... just a shame we didnt have someone as good Boomer Esiason back there.

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I love you more than words can tell
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Well I don't know if I'd say the Bears are overrated, but it's certainly true the Bears didn't beat any great teams that year. In the regular season they didn't beat anybody with 12+ wins. They beats 2 teams with 11 wins, the Ken O'Brien/Marc Gastineau Jets (not great) and the Eason/Fryer Pats (not great). The 10 win teams they beat were the Redskins (down year), the 49ers (definately good, maybe not great), and the Cowboys (again good, but not quite great). The playoffs were already talked about. It's hard to say how good they were, but they beat who was on the schedule, nothing they could do about it. Beating 5 10-win teams is still pretty good.

Reading over some of Sal's different comments, he strikes me as a stat geek who just looks at stats to come up with who the best is. The fact that he has Barry Sanders, Brett Favre, and the 85 Bears all as overrated is just silly.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Let's not forget somethings about that playoff run in 1985. The Bears beat the Giants in the first round. Phil Simms was pretty damn good. That Giants Defense with LT and others was pretty damn good. Hell, that team went on to win the Super Bowl in 1986.

Then we played the Rams. Eric Dickerson was the best Running back in the league that year (Better then Payton slightly at that point. Just because he was younger). I think we held him below 30 yards that game. Yes, the Rams QB sucked.

The Super Bowl was against a bad young QB. But that Patriots defense was great in their 3 other playoff games. They were the Wild Card team but they beat the mighty Dolphins and Marino in Miami.

Agreed, and I don't take it personally/seriously because he's callling all-time greats overrated/underrated to sell a few books.