1929 Chicago Bears Season

The 1929 Chicago Bears season was their 10th regular season completed in the National Football League. The club posted a 4-9-1 record during head coach George Halas's final season. The showing earned them a ninth place finish in the team standings their worst record to date with the club finishing only below .500. Halas would return to coach in a few years. The Bears' season started promising enough, with a 4-1-1 start. However, three of those wins were against the Minneapolis Red Jackets, a team that finished the season 1-9. The final 9 games represented the worst stretch in franchise history, as the Bears went 0-8-1 to finish the season. Few of the Bears losses were even close contests. They lost three times to Green Bay, all shutouts. They also lost three times to New York. Against the Chicago Cardinals, the Bears fought them to a 0-0 tie in the first meeting, but ran into an NFL record performance in the rematch. Ernie Nevers, the former All-America from Stanford and owner-coach-player of the defunct Duluth Eskimos, had the game of a lifetime against Chicago on Thanksgiving Day, November 28th. Nevers rushed for an NFL record 6 touchdowns and added 4 PATs for an NFL record 40 points; 6 TDs and 40 points are both still records and among the oldest standing records in NFL history (although Gale Sayers and Dub Jones tied Nevers with 6 touchdowns in a game, Nevers' 6 rushing touchdowns are still an unmatched record). The Bears were crushed 40-6, with Nevers scoring all the Cardinals' points. The inability of Chicago to compete with the top teams in the NFL may have been the catalyst for Halas to step down as player-coach and focus on his owner duties. Clearly, the Bears needed more talent at the "skill positions" as the Chicago backfield was mostly unchanged since the early 1920s. One bright spot was the emergence of End Luke Johnsos, who caught two touchdown passes late in the season. In addition, the legendary Red Grange rejoined the team and regained some of his earlier form.