Johnsos spent 40 years with Bears as player, coach
End often used his intelligence to his advantage as player
Our pick at No. 40, Luke Johnsos, was known for his intelligence as player, winning three titles over eight seasons with the Bears.
During his 40 years with the Bears, Luke Johnsos’ mind usually was a step or two ahead of his opponents. “The Professor” always looked for a mental edge, and more often than not he found it.
In 1932 against the Giants, Johnsos, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound end, scored the game’s only touchdown when he pretended to tie his shoe near the sideline, caught a pass from Keith Molesworth uncovered and waltzed 29 yards into the end zone.
Bears coach George Halas claimed Johnsos once tricked former teammate Eggs Manske of the Eagles into lateraling him the ball.
“They had been very successful lateraling to each other,” Halas wrote in “Halas by Halas,” his 1979 autobiography. “In our next game (against him), Eggs took a pass and was well on his way to a touchdown.
“Luke was near but couldn’t catch Eggs. He called out, ‘Lateral, Eggs, lateral,’ just as he had in the former days. Eggs didn’t even look around. Luke’s voice told him Luke was in the proper position, four steps to the side, two behind. Eggs tossed the ball. Luke caught it, stopped, turned around and ran.”
Manske didn’t play for the Bears until 1937, the year after Johnsos retired, but it’s possible Halas remembered the play correctly with the wrong player.
Johnsos’ mind was even more valuable as a Bears assistant coach. In 1940 he was the first coach to leave the sideline for the press box and its eye-in-the-sky view that helped diagnose formations and exploit weaknesses in them. Johnsos first used runners to take written information to Halas before the Bears installed telephones in the press box and on the sideline for quicker communication.
“He was the man up on the phone in the stadium, who can be tremendously important if you have confidence in him,” Mike Ditka told the Tribune’s Kenan Heise on Dec. 11, 1984. “He has to resist watching the ball carrier and follow the point of attack or look for patterns on defense.”
Johnsos grew up in Logan Square, played football and baseball at Schurz High School, then played those sports plus basketball at Northwestern. He led the Big Ten with nine home runs in 12 games in 1928 and signed with the Reds, but his poor eyesight precluded a major-league career.
Instead, he caught on with the Bears as a throw-in with a more desired teammate. Halas offered Wildcats fullback Walt Holmer a $5,000-per-year contract, but Holmer said he wouldn’t sign unless the Bears took Johnsos as well. Halas agreed, adding the end for $100 per game for the 1929 season.
“I was only bait for Holmer,” Johnsos said in “Halas by Halas.” “I thought it was kind of funny, but when we began playing, the humor departed. Holmer didn’t make the (starting) team. I was out there getting the devil kicked out of me for a hundred bucks, and Holmer was getting his $5,000 sitting on the bench.”
Johnsos more than held his own for the next eight years. He was named first-team All-Pro in 1930 and ’31 and second-team in 1929 and ’32. He helped the Bears win NFL championships in 1932, when he was second in the league with 19 receptions and 321 yards, and ’33, when he caught an NFL-best three touchdowns.
In 1932 he scored four touchdowns: two receiving, one interception return and a blocked-punt return.
Johnsos totaled 22 touchdowns, 11 pointafter kicks and one field goal for 146 career points. His field goal provided the winning points in a 9-6 victory over the Portsmouth Spartans in 1931. In his final year, 1936, he served as a player-coach, assisting Halas with the offense.
At 31, Johnsos was the third-oldest player in the NFL when he retired. Over the next three decades, his coaching career mirrored the Bears’ ups and downs.
When Halas left to fight in World War II in the middle of the 1942 season, he named Johnsos and Hunk Anderson co-coaches in his absence.
“The division could have caused trouble but didn’t,” Johnsos said in Halas’ book. “Neither of us told the other what to do. The team played both ways.”
Johnsos coached the offense and Anderson the defense as the two-time defending champion Bears finished the 1942 regular season 11-0 but lost to the Giants 30-13 in the NFL championship game. The Bears bounced back the next season to win their third NFL title in four years with a 41-21 win over the Redskins.
“Hunk and I felt pretty good,” Johnsos said. “We had gone through that year without Halas. … Yet we achieved the championship.”
Nineteen of the Bears’ 28 players joined Halas serving overseas in 1944 as the war intensified. The Bears fell to 6-3-1 that season and 3-7 in 1945.
“We held tryouts at Cubs Park and signed up anybody who could run around the field twice,” Johnsos said. “We had a very poor ballclub.”
Halas returned to coach the 1946 team. As he wrote: “I found the Bears were quite different from the team I had left three years earlier. Luke Johnsos had kept me informed, somewhat. When we won, he sent a cable. When we lost, he wrote a letter. I think sometimes he put the letter in a bottle and dropped it into Lake Michigan.”
With everybody back — including Halas and stars Sid Luckman, Bulldog Turner, George McAfee, Danny Fortmann and Bill Osmanski — the Bears rolled to their fourth championship of the decade.
In 1948, with former Bears great Red Grange, Johnsos hosted “The Bears Quarterback Club,” a half-hour highlight show broadcast to TVs in the Chicago area. It did big ratings and was a precursor to televised games.
Things progressed smoothly for Johnsos until 1956, when Halas relinquished his coaching duties for the third time and was set to promote his successor from within.
Johnsos was slated to get the job, and the Chicago American got the scoop. Someone at the newspaper tipped Halas that they had the story. Halas, who favored the Tribune and often fed its writers breaking news, retaliated by telling the Tribune’s Wilfrid Smith that assistant coach and former star halfback Paddy Driscoll, not Johnsos, would be the Bears’ next coach.
Smith wrote that Driscoll was the “logical choice” to follow Halas. Johnsos seethed at the betrayal.
In his 2005 biography “Papa Bear: The Life and Legacy of George Halas,” Jeff Davis wrote: “Johnsos had proved his worth at all levels. He was a dedicated player for Halas from the time he joined the club in 1929 out of Northwestern and a loyal liege as an assistant from 1941 on. While the Old Man served with the Navy in the Pacific, Johnsos and Anderson guided the Bears to the 1943 title. He passed his tests with flying colors. Driscoll had much thinner coaching credentials.”
In time, most came to believe that Johnsos himself fed the news of his hiring to the American.
“Halas had, in fact, likely told Johnsos the job was his, but he would have considered such a leak, especially to the ‘wrong’ paper, far worse than insubordination,” Davis wrote. “To Halas, this was an act of betrayal.”
Johnsos swallowed his pride and went along with the new setup, remaining an assistant until 1968. Driscoll coached the Bears for two years, including the 1956 NFL runner-up season, before Halas reinserted himself on the sideline.
In the 1963 championship game, Johnsos called a special play for Ditka at tight end that led to Bill Wade’s winning quarterback sneak in the 14-10 win against the Giants.
Off the field, Johnsos owned a printing and packaging business with Charles Coppock, father of longtime Chicago sportcaster Chet Coppock. Johnsos died at 79 in Evanston in 1984.
Through all of his good and bad times with Halas, Johnsos never seriously considered leaving the Bears. He turned down at least one head coaching offer from the Cleveland Rams in 1945.
“I’ve always been a Bear and hope to spend my entire football career with George Halas,” he told the Tribune. “He’s good enough for my dough. Besides, this is my home, and I hold another position here. It is simple enough to solve: Two good jobs in Chicago are better than one in Cleveland.”