Sweetness (52 page)

Without McMahon, the Bears—tough, fierce, hobbled—crawled through the remainder of the season, finishing 3-3 behind the mediocre quarterbacking of Steve Fuller and, briefly, Rusty Lisch and Greg Landry. That they held on to win the division is a big tribute to a swarming defense, and an even bigger tribute to the marvelous play of Walter Payton.

At age thirty-one, Payton was enjoying one of the best years of his career. He was named the NFL’s Player of the Month for October, and although he struggled through a couple of poor games in November, it was primarily because defenses (no longer having to worry about McMahon) were back to stacking the line and daring Chicago to pass. On November 25, the Bears clinched their first-ever division title, beating the Vikings 34–3 behind Payton’s 117 yards. As he walked off the Metrodome turf, the normally boisterous purple-clad crowd now silenced, Payton slowed to a saunter, soaking in in the moment. “I’m just going to enjoy it,” he said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s strange.”

Payton’s season was remarkable—he ran for 1,684 yards and eleven touchdowns, earning his seventh trip to the Pro Bowl. What elevated it to phenomenal, however, was that—physically—he was no longer the same player he had once been. The lifespan of an NFL running back is, on average, 2.6 seasons, and with good reason. Through ten seasons, Payton had endured an ungodly number of hits. As contemporaries like Earl Campbell, Wilbert Montgomery, and Billy Sims began to slow down (or collapse completely), Payton somehow sucked up the pain and kept churning out yardage. Hardly a burner at age twenty-one, Payton at thirty-one possessed below-average speed and good, not great, maneuverability. The slashes and twists made famous from earlier days rarely took place anymore; the flamboyant runs decreasingly a part of the package. Johnny Roland, the running backs coach, sought to reduce Payton’s load from sixty-five plays to between forty-five and fifty. The star refused. “It’s almost like the speed didn’t matter,” said Keith Van Horne, a Bears offensive tackle. “Walter could cut back if he needed to, but he became a hole runner, which means he found the holes, rushed through them, and then attacked anyone in his way. He was so rugged, so tough, and so determined. That’s why he lasted.”

Through all the amazing performances Payton coaxed out of a declining body, one game stands out. It took place at Soldier Field on December 9, 1984, with the Bears hosting the Packers in an intense-yet-meaningless late-season matchup. Because of injuries to McMahon and Fuller, as well as the early-season release of Avellini, Chicago was forced to turn to Lisch, a devoutly religious twenty-seven-year-old best known as the man Joe Montana had once replaced as the starter at Notre Dame.

Lisch was an inconsequential player who opened eyes a week earlier when, in the midst of a game at San Diego, he responded to a Ditka browbeating by refusing to return to the game. “I asked Ed [Hughes, the offensive coordinator], ‘Where’s Lisch?’ ” Ditka said.

“He’s not going back in,” Hughes replied. “Said you can’t talk to him like that.”

Ditka approached the quarterback, who was sitting alone on the bench, arms crossed. “Please go back in the game,” the coach said. “I didn’t mean that stuff. You’re a great kid.” Lisch returned, the Bears lost, and the following Tuesday the quarterback brought the coach a gold crucifix.

Lisch started against the Packers, and evoked visions of Kim McQuilken’s heyday. He completed ten of twenty-three passes and, in the words of the
Tribune
’s Bernie Lincicome, “If Rusty Lisch were the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, the coast of Holland would now begin somewhere around the middle of Westphalia.” With the first half drawing to a close and a play-off birth wrapped up, Ditka made a quarterback change. He pulled Lisch and replaced him with the day’s listed backup—Walter Payton.

Walter Payton?

Soldier Field erupted as the substitute—visibly calm, internally petrified—jogged into the huddle, kneeled, and called a play. “He took charge,” said Jay Hilgenberg, the center. “One time he said, ‘Screen left to Cal [running back Calvin Thomas] over there.’ The rest of the time he had it all right.” Payton took six snaps, all from the shotgun position. One of his passes fell incomplete. The other was intercepted by Green Bay’s Tom Flynn. (“It was an innocuous play,” recalled Flynn. “But I’ve always told people that I’m probably in the record books as the only person to intercept Walter Payton’s pass from the quarterback position.”) He ran four times for twenty-five yards. Later in the game, with Lisch back at quarterback, Payton took a handoff and threw a two-yard touchdown pass to Matt Suhey. He also rushed for 175 yards and a touchdown. Chicago lost 20–14, but it didn’t matter.

“Walter did everything you could possibly do on a football field,” said Lynn Dickey, Green Bay’s backup quarterback that day. “I can’t tell you how many times I’d hoped he’d get the flu before we played them.”

The Bears entered the 1984 play-offs having lost two of their final three games and lacking a credible starting quarterback. Under pressure, Ditka came up with a plan for beating favored Washington, the two-time defending NFC champions, in the divisional game at RFK Stadium. “We were gonna ride Walter,” he said, “and hope the defense took care of the rest.”

In his first postseason appearance in five seasons, Payton dazzled. He ran for 104 yards on twenty-four carries, and early in the second quarter took the handoff from Fuller, rolled wide, and tossed a nineteen-yard touchdown pass to tight end Pat Dunsmore for a 10–3 lead. “Walter had a phenomenal arm—he could throw a ball fifty yards, easily,” said Dunsmore. “He didn’t have the best touch, but he got it right to me.” Chicago’s defense pummeled quarterback Joe Theismann and the Bears won, 23–19. Immediately afterward, as his teammates celebrated, Payton headed straight for the Washington locker room. Sprawled out on a training table was Ken Huff, the Redskins’ right guard who had broken his right leg. Nine years earlier, Huff was drafted by Baltimore one spot ahead of Payton. “I hadn’t seen Walter since 1975, and here he was, checking if I was OK,” said Huff. “That just floored me.”

Chicago’s players celebrated loudly in the visiting locker room, but the festivities were short-lived. They would travel to San Francisco the following weekend to play the 49ers in the NFC title game.

The NFC West champions had just completed a 15-1 season, and opened the play-offs by demolishing the New York Giants, 21–10. In the week leading up to Bears vs. 49ers, Chicago’s coaches and players strutted and crowed, bragged and boasted. The Bears were listed as nine-and-a-half-point underdogs, and Ditka loved it. “The German army couldn’t beat us with nine and a half points,” he growled.

“We’re not going to lose the game,” Payton said—and the words wound up hanging on the bulletin board in the 49ers locker room. “We know what we have to do to win at San Francisco,” Ditka said—and the words wound up hanging on the bulletin board in the 49ers locker room.

FINAL SCORE:
SAN FRANCISCO 23
CHICAGO 0

The game was uglier than the outcome. Before 61,040 rabid fans at Candlestick Park, the 49ers sacked Fuller nine times and held Chicago to 186 total yards. “At halftime Ditka fired Ed Hughes,” said Jay Saldi, the veteran tight end. “He was livid because we hadn’t scored any points, and he screamed at Ed, ‘Get the fuck out of the locker room!’ Ed lit up a Marlboro and left.” While Payton ran for a respectable ninety-two yards, few of his twenty-two carries held much significance. “What stood out,” wrote Christine Brennan in
The Washington Post
, “was Walter Payton futilely churning toward the sideline, looking for yardage that didn’t exist.”

Ditka and his players could accept the domination. The 49ers were talented and experienced and widely believed to be chemically enhanced. “They beat the shit out of us,” said Fred Caito, the Bears trainer. “And our offensive and defensive linemen said, ‘These guys are ’roided up, and they’re destroying us in the trenches. We can’t compete with that.’ I assure you many of our linemen started using after that game.” What they could not accept—what they refused to accept—was the second-half sight of Guy McIntyre, a six-foot-three, 271-pound backup offensive lineman, lining up in the backfield alongside halfback Wendell Tyler. San Francisco coach Bill Walsh termed it his Angus offense—named for the Black Angus restaurant the steak-gorging McIntyre used to frequent. There was logic behind the move. The Bears had a hard-hitting free safety, Todd Bell, who was cheating toward the line and pummeling Tyler. McIntyre’s blocking changed that.

The Bears, however, deemed his presence a slap in the face.

“It was brutal,” said Jimbo Covert. “An ultimate sign of disrespect.” Making matters worse, as the two teams walked off the field, members of the 49ers taunted the Bears. “Next time,” one player said, “bring your offense.”

Afterward, Payton sat at his locker, a look of disbelief crossing his face. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He spoke haltingly, almost as if he were in a state of shock. “This is the worst ever,” he said. “When you wait ten years for the chance, and you get this close, and get turned back, it’s hard to deal with. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.”

He was told that Ditka suggested a Super Bowl was within the organization’s grasps for next year.

“Next year,” said Payton, “is not promised to anyone.”

On the morning of February 25, 1985, Walter Payton was scheduled to travel to New York to receive something called the Gordon Gin Black Athlete of the Year award. Once upon a time, such recognition (as well as the twenty-five thousand dollars in prize money and “hand-sculptured trophy by noted sculptor Ed Dwight!”) would have meant something to Payton. Awards; medals; plaques; keys to Urbana, Illinois, or Mahopac, New York, or Thomasville, Georgia—those types of things carried weight with the young, eager-toplease athlete.

At age thirty-one, however, with the end of his career coming into focus, Payton was starting to think differently. Though he had been engaging and accommodating toward fans, throughout much of his career indifference often cloaked his behavior. “He was enigmatic,” said Ron Atlas, his longtime friend. “He could be charming, but he wouldn’t really go out of his way to help individual people.” Because Bud Holmes, his agent, thought it important that every fan who took the time to write receive an autographed reply, a woman who could perfectly forge Payton’s signature was hired to do the tireless work the football player had little interest in. “Walter knew how to please,” Holmes said. “He brought flowers to secretaries, said nice things to people. But he could also be lazy and disinterested.” When, following the 1979 season, Payton was hired by a not-for-profit agency in Indiana to speak to a group of children, he jumped at the opportunity—then forgot to show up. It wasn’t a random oversight. “I sent the appearance fee money back to them and made Walter do it the next year for free,” Holmes said. “I tried like heck to always keep that image up.”

By the time his speed and elusiveness had begun to wane, Payton was keenly aware of the positive power of celebrity and the impact he had on people. Payton wasn’t merely one to ask, “How’s it going?”—he’d inquire about the family; the kids; the dogs; the farm. He wasn’t merely a handshaker—he was a hugger. Of all the Bears, Payton was the one who knew the names of every ball boy and intern. “If you were the kid doing laundry in the equipment room, Walter made sure to get to talk with you,” said Duke Tobin, who worked as a ball boy when his father, Bill, ran personnel. “Walter didn’t just know the ball boys. He knew what they liked, where they went to school, who their parents were. He had this game he liked to play, where he’d grab one side of a football and you’d grab the other, and it’d be a tug-of-war. You couldn’t possibly win, because his fingers were the longest I’d ever seen and he was as strong as an ox. But it was great fun.”

Part of the overt warmth can probably be chalked up to Holmes relentlessly pounding home the point—
Folks want to be inspired. You inspire folks. Use that. Embrace that. Enjoy that.
But there was also a genuinely compassionate soft spot inside Payton. He liked seeing smiles and making a difference; liked knowing someone’s day was completed by a few moments of shared space.