Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  “I was thinking to myself, ‘Here’s Walter, the greatest running back of all time, asking me whether someone was better than him,’ ” said Frazier. “What more do you need to understand about his pride?”

  Payton had gotten to know Dickerson at the 1983 Pro Bowl, and he genuinely liked the kid. Dickerson was deferential and respectful, and credited Payton as an influence. That said, he also knew Dickerson, owner of 1,234 rushing yards during the regular season, was dead meat. Chicago’s terrifying defense had spent the week thinking about bloodying the goggled running back—a California pretty boy if they’d ever seen one. They didn’t care about Dieter Brock, the subpar quarterback, or his fleet of subpar receivers. Ryan told his minions the running back would fumble three times—“more if you hit him enough.”

  “Our entire goal was to shut Eric down,” said Cliff Thrift, a Bears linebacker. “Our defense didn’t just strive to control a player like Eric. We wanted to dominate him.”

  As was tradition, the Bears spent the night before the game at the McCormick Inn, a hotel in downtown Chicago. At six thirty A.M., Suhey heard a loud banging on his door. It was Payton. “He burst into the room and started jumping on the bed, biting me,” Suhey said. “He was so hyper . . . he was even talking about going to the boat show. He was really wired. He was really anxious for this day to come.”

  With the crosswinds gusting around the stadium at 25 mph and a late snow sprinkling the field and 63,522 fans in a frenzy, the Bears punished Dickerson, holding him to forty-six yards on seventeen carries and forcing two fumbles. On his first carry of the game, Fencik nailed him for no gain. The tone was set. In pileups, Chicago’s defenders twisted Dickerson’s ankles and clawed at his eyes. When referees were looking elsewhere, they made his knees prime targets. It was, by far, the most vicious beating he would take in what became an eleven-year Hall of Fame career.

  Technically, Payton was little better, running for a paltry thirty-two yards on eighteen attempts and catching seven passes for forty-eight yards. But his output mattered not. The Bears jumped out to a 10–0 halftime lead, scored again on a twenty-two-yard touchdown catch by Gault in the third quarter, then sealed it when Marshall picked up a fumble and rambled fifty-two yards into the end zone. With 4:26 left in the first quarter, the scoreboard flashed: THE BEARS WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL OUR FANS FOR THEIR SUPPORT IN THE 1985 SEASON. The game was already over.

  With two minutes remaining and the score 24–0, Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” blared from the Soldier Field speakers. Euphoric fans swayed their bodies back and forth, one enormous ocean of frigid glee. They chanted “Super Bowl! Super Bowl! Super Bowl!” When the game ended, the Bears players darted off the field, waving to the fans, twirling towels, laughing and smiling and shouting.

  Payton took his own path. Gazing skyward, he sauntered slowly across the turf, helmet dangling from his right hand. Over the past decade, he had attended two Super Bowls as a guest, only to depart by halftime. This time, he would be going as a star.

  CHAPTER 20

  SUPER LETDOWN

  IN THE VISITING TEAM’S LOCKER ROOM OF THE LOUISIANA SUPERDOME, THERE is a broom closet. It is small and dank and cluttered, with darkness’ only foe a dangling hundred-watt lightbulb.

  Ever since the stadium opened in 1975, football players big and small have used the closet for privacy and solitude. From prayer to euphoria to furor to despair, the room serves as a confessional booth at the Church of Battered Bodies (and Souls).

  On the night of January 26, 1986, with his teammates whooping and hollering inches away, this is where one could find an outraged Walter Payton.

  How did it come to this? How did the Bears’ 46–10 walloping of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX end with an iconic NFL superstar wallowing in a pool of disgust and self-pity?

  “To understand,” said Bud Holmes, his agent, “you have to know Walter.”

  Beginning with the day following the NFC Championship game, Payton had been behaving, for lack of a better word, strangely. Of all forty-five members of Chicago’s active roster, he had the greatest right to cherish the Super Bowl birth. He had been with the team longer than anyone; was witness to the lowest lows; was forever motivated by his 1975 debut, when the Colts held him to zero yards and the fans filed out in stunned resignation. “Walter knew what it was like to be a Bear when the Bears were a joke,” said Steve Fuller, the quarterback. “This was his moment.”

  Unlike most of his teammates, Payton never allowed himself to be placed into a custom-fitted athletic cliché. As Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon and Mike Singletary spoke of the dreamlike glow that accompanied Super Bowl qualification, Payton seemed to sit back and cynically wonder whether this was as good as it got. He certainly would have preferred to be dancing a jig and floating on air, but to his great dismay, the spirit failed to move him. Having rushed for 275 yards in a game and having broken Jim Brown’s record, Payton knew what it was to stand atop the football mountaintop. He already had tasted caviar and drank Dom Pérignon. When the fans exited Soldier Field and the aisles were swept and the lights were shut off after the Rams game, Payton was left with a sinking feeling that, after eleven years of playing for the ultimate team moment, it wasn’t such a moment after all.

  His ho-hum outlook was hardly helped by Chicago’s opponent. Ever since the Monday Night loss to Miami in Week 13, Payton and most of his teammates were itching for a rematch with the Dolphins. When Don Shula’s club reached the AFC Championship game, a Miami-Chicago Super Bowl seemed to be all but written in blood.

  Somehow, though, the Patriots, an 11-5 wild card qualifier without a single household name on its roster, snuck into Miami and battered the Dolphins, 31–14. Instead of the media spending two weeks wondering whether Dan Marino could again carve up the Bears, the media would now spend two weeks wondering how badly Chicago’s 46 Defense would decimate the Patriots’ feeble offensive attack. New England already lost to the Bears, 20–7, in the second week of play, and was rightly listed as an early ten-point underdog. Weeks before kickoff, NFL Films had begun preparing a three-hundred-thousand-dollar production of the Bears’ Super Bowl season. No New England video was in the works. “To be honest, we went into the Super Bowl knowing we were a better team, and that the Patriots couldn’t win,” said Cliff Thrift, the linebacker. “We were big, we were bad, and we were going to kick their butts. No mystery about it.”

  As was NFL policy, both organizations had two weeks to kill before the big game. Ditka gave his players three days off, and Chicago spent the rest of the first week working out at the University of Illinois’ football field, which featured artificial turf and an enormous vinyl-coated polyester covering reminiscent of the Superdome. Some 175 journalists from across the globe attended the closed practices, desperate for newsworthy nuggets in an otherwise sports-dead time of year.

  “What will it mean not to have the Honey Bears next season?” a reporter asked Steve McMichael of the soon-to-be-disbanded cheerleading squad.

  “It sounds to me,” the defensive lineman replied, “like you guys are running out of questions.”

  The Super Bowl beat took on significantly more liveliness on the night of Monday, January 20, when the Bears’ chartered flight left arctic Chicago (temperature: thirteen degrees) and arrived at New Orleans International Airport (temperature: seventy-two degrees). “We got on the buses from the airport to our hotel, and a convertible full of girls pulled alongside us and started taking their tops off,” said Tom Andrews, a Chicago center. “That was where it started.”

  Raymond Berry, New England’s old-school coach, ran a tight ship. At the Hotel Intercontinental there were nightly curfews and meetings atop meetings. All players were expected to carry themselves in a manner befitting a professional football player. Ditka, on the other hand, demanded little—practice relatively hard, don’t get arrested, and seize the day. Inside the New Orleans Hilton, where the Bears were based, the lobby bar was a magnet for action and the party never seemed to end.
“Man, we had a great time,” said Maury Buford, the punter. “I remember we flew down and Mike didn’t put a curfew on us. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—we could do whatever we wanted for as long as we wanted. By Wednesday we were begging him for a curfew, because we were partied out.”

  “The Thursday practice before the Super Bowl was the worst,” said Jimbo Covert. “We all went out Wednesday night. I had four or five beers before we left, and then we all went to Pat O’Brien’s. I drank three hurricanes, and I felt like I’d blown the top of my head off. We were rock stars wherever we went. People even knew the offensive linemen.”

  The Bears overran Bourbon Street, drinking like sailors and boasting one sexual conquest after another. Having supplanted the Dallas Cowboys as the nation’s most popular team, the Bears owned the city. By one player’s estimation, for every New England fan there were five hundred people pulling for Chicago. “The Super Bowl was pretty much a home game for us,” said Calvin Thomas, a Bears running back. “In the streets, all you saw was blue and orange.”

  As had been the case for much of the regular season, Payton took a backseat to Perry and McMahon. His saga was a fine one in the conventional sense (veteran finally makes it), but Super Bowl XX symbolized a new era. This was about immediate pleasure and neon-lit entertainment value. The game was being covered heavily by, of all outlets, MTV, a network that knew little of rushing yards and touchdowns but specialized in shock and imagery.

  The talk of New Orleans was Perry’s sizeable gut (How much gumbo could one man eat?) and McMahon’s bruised buttocks (Why wasn’t Hiroshi Shiriashi, his acupuncturist, allowed on the team plane?), which he gleefully flashed for a low-flying news helicopter soaring above Bears practice. “It was the craziest thing I’ve ever been a part of,” said Kevin Butler, the rookie kicker. “Thank God they didn’t have camera phones back then, because you can’t imagine how over the top we were.”

  As McMahon made his way through the city with kinetic glee, Payton laid low. He ate primarily room service, and spent much of his time on his bed, watching TV. One evening, to the delight of teammates, he rented a couple of buses and had the Bears escorted to a seemingly abandoned clubhouse in the middle of Louisiana. From the kitchen emerged Justin Wilson, the famed Cajun chef, armed with vats of crawfish. “That was remarkable,” said Greg Gershuny, the team’s director of information services. “We ate like kings.” With most of the players’ wives not scheduled to arrive in New Orleans until a day or two before the game, there was ample opportunity to fool around—and many of the Bears did. Whether Payton took full advantage remains unknown. Two nights before the game, however, Payton called one of his friends in Chicago who had chartered a seventy-six-seat jet to New Orleans. “I need a spot on the plane,” Payton said.

  “You can’t fly with us,” the friend said. “You’re already there.”

  “No,” Payton replied. “There’s someone I want you to bring to New Orleans for me. I need one seat.”

  “Under no circumstances could I turn him down,” said the friend.

  “First, he got us about twenty tickets to the game. Second, we’re good pals. Third, we were all caught up in Super Bowl hoopla, and much of the hoopla was about Walter. What was I to do?”

  When Payton’s “someone” arrived at the airport hangar, she was exactly what the friend expected—long legs, large chest, blond hair, short skirt. Her name was Jennifer, and she worked as a bartender. On that same day, Connie, having flown commercial, arrived in New Orleans with the two children. “I actually sat near Connie at the game,” said the friend. “We all sat at the fifty-yard line, and I had to act as if nothing had happened.”

  Indeed, despite having fathered a child out of wedlock only one year earlier, Payton steadfastly pursued other women. It was around this time that he was diagnosed with genital herpes, a sexually transmitted disease that causes recurrent painful sores. Payton was initially shocked and dismayed by the diagnosis, but rarely—if ever—found it necessary to inform future sexual partners of the viral infection.17 “There was a certain pressure that came with being idolized,” said the friend. “Walter was away from home a lot, and he felt pulled. He lived two lives—the loving husband and father in Chicago, and the slimy womanizer on the road. Was he as bad as Tiger Woods? No. But it was a problem. People knew we were good friends, and they’d call and tell me, ‘I saw Walter out with so-and-so woman, and it wasn’t Connie.’ I didn’t know what to say. He was Walter Payton, the king of Chicago. I kept my mouth shut.”

  One person who didn’t was Singletary, the Bears’ All-Pro middle linebacker. Devoutly Christian and unafraid to show it, Singletary watched with great disappointment as Payton regularly cheated on his wife. He obviously knew athletes did such things, but expected more from someone of Payton’s character and esteem. “Mike finds out that despite Walter’s stellar career and reputation, he’s catting around on the road,” said a friend of Payton. “He had a devoted wife, precious children, and yet he’s being unfaithful.” One afternoon during the 1985 season, while taking a team bus to the airport, Singletary slid into the vacant seat alongside Payton. “Man, you’ve got to clean up your act,” he said. “You’ve got a beautiful family and you claim to be a Christian. You know better.”

  This was the first time someone had confronted him on his womanizing, and Payton was shocked. He turned toward the window, away from Singletary, and pretended not to listen. In the reflection, Singletary saw tears streaming down Payton’s face.

  Singletary had no idea what his friend was thinking. Through the end of Payton’s career, the two never spoke again.

  As a boy growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, Raymond Berry learned the sport of football at the knee of his father. A high school coach for thirty-five years, Raymond, Sr. preached that, with the right mindset and preparation, a poor team could beat a great one on any given day. “I listened to everything he said, and I absorbed that message,” said Berry. “No matter the odds, there was always a way to accomplish your goals.”

  Berry’s playing career personified this ethos. Though never especially fast, he lasted thirteen years as a wide receiver with the Baltimore Colts, teaming with Johnny Unitas to win two NFL titles, play in six Pro Bowls and, in 1973, be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

  Now, at age fifty-two and in his first full year as New England’s head coach, Berry thought back to his father’s wisdom. “I knew the Chicago Bears were an incredible team,” he said. “But I honestly felt we’d win the game. We just had to make sure we did several things right.”

  The game plan was relatively simple. On offense, the Patriots couldn’t turn over the ball, and quarterback Tony Eason had to get his passes off within three seconds of receiving the snap. “We had a new offensive scheme that year, so we didn’t do anything complex,” said Berry. “Simplicity got us to the Super Bowl. Do the basic things well.”

  Berry handed all responsibilities for the other side of the ball to Rod Rust, the defensive coordinator. Fifty-seven years old and a well-regarded strategist, Rust was the anti–Buddy Ryan. He rarely bragged or boasted and never looked to undermine his head coach. “Buddy was too much of a selfpromoter to me,” said Rust. “Great at his job, but very cocky.”

  Like Berry, Rust watched tapes of the Bears and considered them beatable. If Chicago’s defense was ferocious, its passing attack—ranked twentieth overall in the league—was merely average. McMahon was brittle; Willie Gault and Dennis McKinnon were OK receivers; and the tight end, Emery Moorehead, was a journeyman. “It was all about stopping the run,” said Rust. “Payton was the first guy we wanted to defend. He was the linchpin to their offense. You stopped him, you stopped the Chicago Bears from scoring.” New England’s veterans took strange comfort in Chicago’s cockiness. To them, the machismo reeked of insecurity—a nervousness over falling flat on the nation’s biggest stage. The more the Bear players flapped their lips, the more the Patriots believed they were destined for an upset of Namath-ian proportions. “We had n
o doubt about winning,” said Don Blackmon, a New England linebacker. “None.”18

  Payton had spent the morning of the game relaxing at the hotel, and arrived at the Superdome in chipper spirits. While eating his regular pregame meal of a bowl of Raisin Bran with the raisins meticulously picked out, he turned to Gault and said, “I feel great about this. We’re gonna remember today forever.”

  As a Chicago captain, Payton was in charge of calling the coin toss. He walked out to midfield alongside Jimbo Covert, Shaun Gayle, Gary Fencik, and Mike Singletary and watched Bart Starr—one of seventeen former Super Bowl MVPs being honored—flip a silver dollar into the air.

  Payton mumbled something, and as the coin landed tails he said, loudly, “Tails, I called!”

  “You called heads,” said Red Cashion, the referee.

  “No,” said Fencik. “He said tails.”

  The Patriots players began complaining. “Toss it again,” said Steve Grogan, New England’s backup quarterback.

  Cashion laughed nervously. “He called tails,” he said. “He is the winner, and it’s [the Bears’] choice.”

  Chicago opted to receive, and Gault returned the opening kickoff eleven yards to the Chicago eighteen-yard line. On the game’s first offensive play, McMahon tossed a pitch to Payton—“Who else!” said Dick Enberg, NBC’s play-by-play announcer—who swerved left and gained seven yards. He popped up and trotted back to the huddle. The next call was another handoff, this time straight into the teeth of New England’s defensive line. McMahon accepted the snap and gave the ball to a fast-approaching Payton, who took a step to his left and was immediately drilled by Garin Veris, the Patriots’ six-foot-four, 255-pound defensive end. Veris’ helmet dislodged the ball and Larry McGrew, a speedy linebacker, dove atop the loose object at the nineteen-yard line. New England was in business.