That's not right. Chicago was -4 all week. Occasionally it would dip to -3.5 then be pushed back up. On game day some of the wise guy joints dropped to Bears -3.5 and stayed there through kickoff. I never saw -4.5 all week.
Chicago would have been a 7 to 8 point favorite over Miami in the Super Bowl. Most spots were planning to open it -7.5
I thought -- and still think -- the Dolphins would have been brutally exposed, just like a year earlier. There was a vast, vast class and physicality difference between the AFC powers and NFC powers in that era. Regular season results didn't mean much of anything. I can't count how many guys I knew who always tried to make a matchup case for the AFC team and paid for it. The one time it nearly worked was 1988 because Cincinnati had a big strong offensive line and there was some talk they could run the ball and shorten the game against the 49ers. It played out that way for 59.5 minutes. But none of the AFC teams that relied on passing and outscoring the opponent managed anything but a disaster. Both lines would collapse.
Still, I would have liked to have seen it. This isn't the NBA where the best team has 7 games to prove it. No question the Bears were far superior but they would have to avoid all the inconvenient stuff like turnovers, and big plays from the other side. Miami never would have moved the ball like the first game. It would have been big plays or nothing. There seems to be quite a bit of denial here toward how dominant that Bears team was. The entire season means exponentially more than one game. With a team like that there is no such thing as matching up poorly.
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