Back in 1920, the Staley Starch Company of Decatur, Illinois sponsored a professional football team. On September 17 of that year, the Staleys sent George Halas to pay a $100 franchise fee for membership in the American Professional Football Association.
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Two years later, Halas was granted full ownership of the organization. Along with the APFA rebranding as the National Football League in 1922, Halas moved his team and gave it a new name: the Chicago Bears.
Through the league’s opening years, the Bears dominated their competition and bolstered their roster in atypical fashions. In a time long before trades and free agency, they broke the barrier of buying players when they acquired Ed Healey from Rock Island in exchange for a mere $100.
As a Bear, Healey blossomed into a superstar. The “most versatile tackle in history” according to Halas, Healey earned all-league recognition in five of eight seasons.
He once ran 30 yards to tackle a teammate who had run the wrong way after intercepting a pass, and reportedly “hurdled several teammates” to make a touchdown-saving tackle versus the Los Angeles All-Stars in 1926.
Healey earned induction into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1964, 37 years after his final contest.
While the 21st-century Bears have missed the NFL playoffs more often than they’ve reached them, things in the Windy City used to be drastically different.
Chicago dominated the NFL’s early years
In the first decade of their rebrand, Halas’ franchise finished as a top-three team seven times. Chicago never managed to reign as top dogs over that stretch, though, leaving Halas without a championship.
That changed in 1932. After opening the season 2-1-5, the Bears finished the year on a 5-0-1 run to claim their first title. They capped their season with a 9-0 victory over the Portsmouth Spartans in the first-ever indoor NFL game.
Chicago followed up with a 10-2-1 record in 1933, and claimed a second consecutive championship.
When the NFL wound its way through into its third decade, the Bears kept on crushing their foes. From 1940-1946, Chicago won four championships, including three in four years to open the 1940s. The biggest highlight of that period came in the 1940 Championship Game, where they thrashed the Washington Redskins 73-0.
To this day, the Bears’ 73 points remain the most ever scored by one team in an NFL game. The 73-point margin of victory is also the largest the league has ever seen.
Chicago has long fallen from the incredible heights they maintained back then: they’ve won just one league championship and one Super Bowl in the past 78 seasons.
Bears fans are hoping Caleb Williams will be able to change that in the years ahead. But first, he will try to get them back to .500 when they host the Los Angeles Rams in Week 4.
