George Allen

Allen had been out of coaching since 1977; he had been a candidate for the vacant head coaching position with the Chicago Bears a year earlier; he'd made his mark in the NFL a quarter-century earlier as the Bears' de facto defensive coordinator. However, Bears owner George Halas had never forgiven Allen for defecting to the Los Angeles Rams in 1965. The feeling was mutual; Allen relished the chance to get the better of the rival Bears.^[1] Allen immediately became the "face" of the new team, and set about putting together the best 40-man roster he could find. The result was a team loaded with NFL veterans that was the early favorite to be the new league's first champion.

1983 season

The Blitz finished in a tie for the Central Division title with the Michigan Panthers. However, the Panthers were awarded the division title after sweeping the Blitz in the regular season, and would go on to become the league's first champions.

In the playoffs, the Blitz blew a 21-point lead over the Philadelphia Stars, losing 44–38 in overtime.

The Hoffman Era

Hoffman spent heavily in promoting the new Blitz. He hired NFL veteran, future Pro Football Hall of Famer and Chicago native Marv Levy as coach: Levy reportedly thought he would be taking over George Allen's team when he took the job.

Bears backup QB Vince Evans was brought in to be the new Blitz starting quarterback. Evans signed in November 1983 to a 4-year, $5 million deal in spite of owning a rather unimpressive 57.31 QB rating in seven previous NFL seasons. Evans' accuracy was always an issue in the NFL. His most accurate season up to that point was 1980 when he completed 53.2% of his passes. He entered the USFL with a career NFL competition percentage of 48.7% and a 31-53 TD to INT ratio.

In January 1984, the Blitz tendered an offer that would have been the largest contract in football, $2 million a year for 3 years, to Bears star running back Walter Payton. Payton promised to consider the offer, but would not be rushed. The Blitz 1984 season was scheduled to start on February 27 and the new ownership had little success selling season tickets. As the Blitz needed Payton quickly to help sales, so they put a deadline on the offer of February 9. In the event, before Payton made his decision, the Blitz withdrew the offer realizing they simply did not have the finances.

After this failure, Hoffman aggressively marketed the Blitz, pouring much money into advertising. It was to no avail; with a less talented team and no big names to attract fans, ticket sales flatlined. Fans were unhappy that Hoffman had jettisoned the core of a near NFL-quality team in favor of an also-ran.

At the outset, the USFL had made much of the fact that it required potential owners to submit to a detailed due diligence and meet strict capitalization requirements. However, it subsequently emerged that USFL officials had largely dispensed with these procedures after Hoffman made an offer for the Blitz. They had been so desperate to get an apparently solid owner in the nation's third-largest market that they never took a close look at Hoffman's finances. He only paid $500,000 at signing, with the remainder of the purchase price due in installments.^[2]

When Hoffman realized that he had grossly underestimated the cost of running a professional football team, he scrambled to find minority investors, but not before falling behind in paying several bills.^[1] After the second preseason game, Hoffman abruptly walked away ^[2] and nominally left the team in the hands of his minority partners. However, Hoffman's now-former partners returned the franchise to the league soon afterward when they could not even begin to secure the financing needed to take the field.

The USFL now had a major problem, as they could not simply shut down the Blitz. Its contract with ABC required the league to have teams in the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago markets, which were home to ABC's strongest-performing stations.

The league was forced to take over the franchise, with league personnel director Carl Marasco taking over as team president, and future Hall of Famer Bill Polian becoming player personnel director. Soon after taking control, Marasco fired nearly all of Hoffman's front office staff in a cost-cutting move.^[1]

The 1984 season

Although the 1984 Blitz had many of the same players as the 1983 Wranglers, they were a weaker team due to two reasons.

First, there was an expansion draft and its requirements. All of the initial 12 teams were required to make players available for the six new expansion teams. Secondly, Evans was not a capable replacement for Risher, the league's 6th-ranked passer in 1983.

Levy kept the "new" Blitz competitive at first. While they lost their first five games, two came as a result of late field goals and one came in overtime. They managed consecutive wins over Washington and San Antonio, but won only three more times after that, finishing with the third-worst record in the league. The 1983 Wrangler defense gave up a league worst 442 points and the 1984 Blitz were equally as challenged defensively, finishing second to last in the league with 466 points allowed.

Evans was the quarterback many fans expected—a flashy talent with little accuracy or consistency and a penchant for turnovers. For the season, he completed 48.7% of his passes with 14 TDs and 22 INTs for a rating of 58.29. Featured HB Larry Canada was solid, running for 915 yards and 7 TDs and adding 48 catches. WR Marcus Anderson led the team with 50 catches for 940 yards with 5 TDs. All-Pro punter Jeff Gossett led the USFL with a 42.5-yard avg.

Matters were little better off the field. The league only pumped the bare minimum into the team to keep it on the field through the season. With their promotional efforts derailed by the firing of the front office staff the Blitz attracted only 7,500 people per game, the second-lowest average gate in the league. The inability to draw even 10,000 per game would dramatically affect the team's bottom line.

Shutting down

With four games to go, a press conference was held announcing that the Blitz would be shut down. At the same time, the USFL awarded a new Chicago franchise to Chicago White Sox minority owner Eddie Einhorn.^[3] While it was stressed that Einhorn's franchise was not the Blitz, Einhorn retained the rights to all Blitz players and coaching staff—strongly implying the team would play in the 1985 season. ABC had no objections to this move, probably due to the USFL's anemic ratings in Chicago.

Einhorn was a strong proponent of the USFL's planned move to the fall in 1986 (so as not to compete with his own White Sox or their crosstown rivals the Chicago Cubs for fans), and focused his efforts on getting a new television deal for the team. He was only willing to field a team in the USFL's final spring lame duck season of 1985 if he could merge with another team and was allowed to select players in an expansion draft. When the league refused to agree to these terms, he opted to sit out the 1985 season. He decided to sit out 1986 as well and concentrate instead on getting a new television deal.^[1] It wound up being academic when the USFL suspended operations after only winning three dollars in damages in an antitrust suit against the NFL.

Players who went on to the National Football League

The Blitz had a number of players who had played in the National Football League or would go on to play there. Some of them were Vince Evans, Tim Spencer, Trumaine Johnson, Greg Landry, Jeff Gossett, Vagas Ferguson, Richard Holland, Joe Ehrmann, Tim Wrightman, Larry Canada, Tom Thayer, Frank Minnifield, Jim Fahnhorst, Marc May, Brian Glasgow, Walter Easley, Luther Bradley, Troy Thomas, Robert Cobb, Ed Smith, Stan White, Eddie Brown, Kevin Long, and Mark Keel.

There are currently two coaches in the Pro Football Hall of Fame that coached in the USFL, both whom coached the Blitz: George Allen (1983) and Marv Levy (1984).