Mike Ditka

Mike Ditka died on October 9, 2026, at the age of 86, nine days before his 87th birthday. His family announced his death that Friday in a statement first shared on Chicago's 104.3 The Score by Jarrett Payton, son of Walter Payton, who said the family had announced his passing that morning. The statement said: "It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and friend, Mike Ditka. While the world knew Mike as a Hall of Fame football player, legendary coach, and leader of the Chicago Bears' Super Bowl XX championship team, we knew him as the heart of our family. Mike will be missed beyond measure and remembered forever."

The cause and place of death have not been made public. Ditka had a long history of heart problems, including heart attacks in 1988 and 2018 and a minor stroke in 2012. Tributes poured in from across football, including from ESPN's Adam Schefter, who called him a towering figure in Chicago who revolutionized the tight end position, and from former players, broadcasters and fans of the Bears, Cowboys, Eagles and Saints.

Mike Ditka was born Michael Dyczko on October 18, 1939, in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. He was the oldest child of Charlotte (Keller) Ditka and Mike Ditka Sr., a welder who was one of three brothers in a Polish and Ukrainian family in the coal-mining and steel-making country of Western Pennsylvania. His mother's side of the family was Irish and German. He grew up in nearby Aliquippa with his siblings Ashton, David and Mary Ann.

People in town found the name Dyczko hard to pronounce, so the family name was changed to Ditka. He attended St. Titus School and then Aliquippa High School, where he was a three-sport star under head coach Press Maravich, father of basketball great Pete Maravich. The team doctor, John L. Miller, took Ditka and other players to University of Pittsburgh games and encouraged them to play there. "Doc Miller patched me up many times," Ditka later said.

Ditka hoped a football scholarship would let him escape the mill jobs that defined his hometown, and at first he planned to become a dentist. Notre Dame, Penn State and Pitt all recruited him. He later said his nickname, Iron Mike, came from being born and raised in a steel town.

Ditka attended the University of Pittsburgh from 1958 to 1960. He was a three-sport athlete for the Panthers, playing football, baseball as an outfielder and basketball as a forward, and he was also an intramural wrestling champion and a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

On the football team he started all three seasons and led Pitt in receiving each year, while also playing linebacker and defensive end and handling the punting. As a senior and team captain he was a unanimous first-team All-American as a two-way end. He finished his college career with 45 catches for 730 yards and seven touchdowns.

Pitt retired his number 89 in 1997, and in 2018 he was part of the inaugural 16-member class of the University of Pittsburgh Athletics Hall of Fame. He was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986.

The Chicago Bears selected Ditka fifth overall in the 1961 NFL draft, and the Houston Oilers took him eighth overall in the AFL draft. He signed with Chicago and changed the tight end position almost at once. In 1961 he caught 58 passes for 1,076 yards and 12 touchdowns, the most touchdowns by a Bears rookie, becoming the first tight end in NFL history to top 1,000 receiving yards as a rookie and winning Rookie of the Year honors. He earned a Pro Bowl berth in each of his first five seasons.

Ditka was a key part of the Bears team that won the 1963 NFL championship, and that season he tied Harlon Hill's franchise record with four receiving touchdowns in a game against the Los Angeles Rams. In six seasons in Chicago he caught 316 passes for 4,503 yards and 34 touchdowns. His time as a Bears player ended in a contract dispute with owner and coach George Halas, about whom he famously said that Halas "threw nickels around like manhole covers."

In 1967 he was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles for quarterback Jack Concannon, and injuries limited him over two seasons there. In January 1969 the Eagles traded him to the Dallas Cowboys. In Dallas he regained much of his old form, set a franchise record for tight ends with 30 catches in 1971, and scored a touchdown in the Cowboys' 24 to 3 win over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI. He retired on March 1, 1973, with 427 receptions for 5,812 yards and 43 touchdowns, then the most catches by a tight end in NFL history.

Ditka moved straight from the field to the coaching staff of Tom Landry in Dallas, spending nine seasons as an assistant coach and special teams coordinator. The Cowboys made the playoffs eight times in that span, won three NFC titles and won Super Bowl XII after the 1977 season. While in Dallas he wrote to George Halas, apologizing for the way he had left Chicago and saying he would like to coach the Bears one day.

Halas hired him as head coach for the 1982 season. Ditka told his players, "Give me three years, and if you walk with me, we'll get to the dance." In 1984 the Bears reached the NFC Championship Game. In 1985, with a defense run by coordinator Buddy Ryan and an offense built around Walter Payton and Jim McMahon, they went 15 and 1 and beat the New England Patriots 46 to 10 in Super Bowl XX on January 26, 1986, still the franchise's only Super Bowl win. Ditka later said one of his biggest regrets was not giving Payton a touchdown in that game. He was named AP and UPI Coach of the Year in 1985 and again in 1988.

The Bears won division titles in 1986, 1987 and 1988 and reached the NFC Championship Game again after the 1988 season, during which Ditka coached through a heart attack. The team slipped after that and he was fired on January 5, 1993, after a 5 and 11 season. His 106 wins with the Bears are second only to Halas, and he coached 12 playoff games for Chicago, more than anyone in team history.

After four years in television, Ditka took over the New Orleans Saints in 1997. The Saints went 6 and 10 in 1997 and again in 1998. Before the 1999 draft he traded all of the team's picks, plus a 2000 first-rounder, to Washington to select running back Ricky Williams, and posed with Williams, who wore a wedding dress, for a magazine cover. The 1999 team finished 3 and 13, and Ditka and general manager Bill Kuharich were fired on January 6, 2000. Over 14 seasons as a head coach his regular-season record was 121 and 95, and 6 and 6 in the playoffs. He and Tom Flores are the only people to win a Super Bowl as a player, an assistant coach and a head coach.

Almost immediately after leaving the Bears in 1993, Ditka joined NBC as an analyst on NFL Live and other broadcasts. After New Orleans he spent the 2000 and 2001 seasons on CBS's The NFL Today, then had a long run at ESPN, including Sunday NFL Countdown and a turn in the Monday Night Football booth in 2007. In 2016 he moved to remote analysis for SportsCenter so he could work from home. He was also a regular voice on radio, including Westwood One's Monday Night Football pregame show and ESPN 1000 in Chicago.

On screen he appeared as himself in the final episode of Cheers in 1993, in According to Jim, and with cameos on L.A. Law, Saturday Night Live and 3rd Rock from the Sun. His biggest film role was in the 2005 comedy Kicking and Screaming, playing himself as Will Ferrell's assistant youth soccer coach. Saturday Night Live's recurring "Bill Swerski's Superfans" sketches, devoted to "Da Bears" and "Da Coach," made him a pop culture icon.

He wrote Ditka: An Autobiography with Don Pierson and two books with Rick Telander, The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest and In Life, First You Kick Ass. He lent his name to video games, including Mike Ditka Ultimate Football and Mike Ditka Power Football in 1991 and Quarterback Attack with Mike Ditka in 1995, and in 1987 starred in the music video "The Grabowski Shuffle."

Ditka built a business empire around his name. He owned the Ditka's restaurant chain, with locations in Illinois and Pittsburgh, and discovered singer John Vincent, who performed at his Chicago restaurant from 2001. In 2007 he helped launch Mike Ditka Resorts in the Orlando area. He was a co-owner of the Chicago Rush arena football team and in 2020 became owner of the X League, a women's tackle football league.

He partnered with Terlato Wines on a line of Mike Ditka wines in 2012, with Camacho Cigars on a cigar series the same year, and with Vienna Beef on Ditka Sausages in 2013. He was a familiar face in commercials for Montgomery Ward, Overstock.com and McDonald's, whose 2015 ads featuring him in a Green Bay Packers sweater vest became a running joke among Bears fans.

Ditka married his first wife, Marge, in 1961. They divorced in 1973 and had four children: Mark, Matt, Mike and Megan. In 1977 he married Diane Trantham, who survived him.

He lived in Bannockburn, Illinois, from 1989 to 1997 and in the English Turn area of New Orleans from 1997 to 2001. He was a practicing Roman Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus.

His health was tested several times. He had a heart attack during the 1988 season, which he blamed on stress, a minor stroke at a Chicago-area country club in November 2012, and another heart attack while playing golf in Naples in November 2018. In 1985 he was arrested and later convicted of driving under the influence near O'Hare International Airport.

Ditka described himself as an "ultra-ultra-ultra conservative." In July 2004 Illinois Republicans courted him to run for the U.S. Senate against state senator Barack Obama after nominee Jack Ryan withdrew. He declined on July 14, 2004, citing personal and business reasons, and later said he regretted not running. He nonetheless appeared in a 2010 ad for Democratic governor Pat Quinn and in a 2014 ad for Quinn's Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, and he was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump.

He was a longtime advocate for retired NFL players struggling with medical bills and small pensions and was a key member of the Gridiron Greats effort. In October 2011 he led the 1985 Bears to the White House for the visit they had missed in 1986 because of the Challenger disaster, presenting President Obama with a number 85 jersey.

Ditka's temper was part of his legend. As a player he decked a fan who ran onto the field in Los Angeles in 1966. As Bears coach he feuded openly with defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, and the two came to blows during the team's lone 1985 loss in Miami. His meltdowns in New Orleans, including a short, testy news conference and his remark that God "probably put me here to be humbled," became famous.

In December 2007 he folded his Hall of Fame Assistance Trust Fund after the American Institute of Philanthropy reported that the charity had paid more to celebrities to play golf than it gave to injured players. In 2017 his comments on Colin Kaepernick's anthem protests, and his October 2017 claim that there had been "no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of," drew sharp criticism, including from Joe Namath. He then issued a statement saying, "I have absolutely seen oppression in society in the last 100 years and I am completely intolerant of any discrimination."

As a player: NFL Rookie of the Year (1961), five Pro Bowls, six-time All-Pro, NFL champion (1963) and Super Bowl VI champion. As a coach: Super Bowl XII champion as a Cowboys assistant, Super Bowl XX champion as Bears head coach, and AP and UPI NFL Coach of the Year in 1985 and 1988.

He was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and became the first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988. He was named to the NFL's 75th and 100th Anniversary All-Time Teams, ranked 90th on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, and was inducted into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. Pitt retired his number 89 in 1997 and the Bears retired it on December 9, 2013.

Ditka changed what a tight end could be. Before him the position was mostly a blocking job, and his rookie season showed that a tight end could also be a primary receiver, paving the way for the modern game. As a coach he gave Chicago its defining sports moment, the 1985 Bears, a team still argued about as one of the greatest in NFL history.

He is the only person to take part in the Bears' last two league championships, as a player in 1963 and head coach in 1985, and one of only a handful in modern NFL history to win a title as head coach of a team he once played for. To many people, his sweater vest, mustache and gruff voice were Chicago itself. On the day he died, 104.3 The Score host Leila Rahimi summed it up for many listeners: "He is the Chicago Bears." At his Hall of Fame induction he said that excellence in football and in life is bred when people recognize their opportunities and pursue them with a passion.