Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  “I didn’t come to Chicago to back Walter up and learn from him, as some thought I should have. No, I came to Chicago to play. To play tailback. That was my attitude. I think other people were more willing to learn from him and eventually hope to take over. That wasn’t me.”

  Now thirty-three years old, with 14,860 career rushing yards, the assumption around the league was that the Bears would lessen Payton’s load while gradually shifting the focus toward Anderson. Even Ditka, Payton’s biggest supporter, said he wanted to “not get him beat up” with excessive usage. “I’m going to put him into situations probably a little differently than a year ago when I would have used him as a lead blocker,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what I want him doing.” Payton bristled at the suggestion.

  Unlike Anderson, whose absence was generally ignored by teammates, Payton reported to training camp in Platteville, Wisconsin, with a bang—landing alongside one of the practice fields in a helicopter piloted by Gordon Ward of Chicago’s Omni Flight. Payton paid eight hundred dollars for the one-hour, twenty-minute ride, and deemed the flight worth every cent. “Best entrance I’ve ever seen,” said Henry Jackson, a rookie free agent linebacker. “It declared his importance.” Payton further announced his presence (and status) by residing not in one of the drab dormitory rooms, but in the souped-up RV he parked adjacent to the facility. Equipped with a television, a kitchen, and all the frozen meat one could ever want, Payton’s living unit was a camp hotspot. Technically, it was only supposed to serve as a place for Payton to relax. Factually, he lived there, and a ball boy was assigned to wake him each morning. “It was just like the trailer Clark Griswold had in Vacation,” said Mike Tomczak, a backup quarterback. “Why sit in a dorm when you can bring five people into a mobile home and hang out and relax?”

  If the 1985 season served as a confirmation of Payton’s stature, 1986 was a final reminder. The Bears were, once again, great, going 14-2 and winning a third straight division title. But just as the brilliance of a classic movie cannot be recaptured in a sequel, an all-time legendary football team rarely lasts beyond one season.

  Taken in and of themselves, Payton’s numbers (1,333 rushing yards, eight touchdowns) alone told a dominant story, but the ’86 Bears were a faded copy of the ’85 edition. From the commercialism (McMahon plugged Taco Bell; Payton hawked Kentucky Fried Chicken; Gault endorsed his own clothing line; Perry promoted, well, everything) to the literary deals (Singletary, McMahon, and Ditka wrote books) to the increased club hopping and alcohol guzzling, Chicago lost its edge. The team was hungry, but not famished; angry, but not ferocious. Talk of a dynasty filled the newspapers and airwaves. Dynasties, though, start with a base level of unselfishness. “Everybody got greedy,” said Fred Caito, the veteran trainer. “The players, the coach—everybody. It was a snowball rolling down a very steep hill. The money, the fame, the egos. It ate our team alive.”

  Buddy Ryan, the feisty defensive coordinator, departed to become head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, and with him left the blood-thirst of the NFL’s most dangerous defense. His replacement, Vince Tobin, was—in a stark departure from the cantankerous Ryan—a warm man who had served capably as the defensive coordinator of the USFL’s Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars. With the Bears he immediately dismantled much of Ryan’s 46 Defense, implementing the 4-3 alignment he knew and loved. “I told the guys that it wasn’t me who took off, it was Buddy,” said Tobin. “They could either work with me or decide not to and pull the team apart.” Technically, Tobin succeeded—the ’86 Bears again ranked first in the NFL in total defense, and allowed fewer passing yards and fewer yards per carry while posting only two fewer sacks than a year earlier. The defense even set an NFL record for fewest points allowed. Yet statistics fail to tell the whole story. Opposing quarterbacks who once quivered at the sight of Mike Singletary or Wilber Marshall no longer had fear in their eyes. Opposing running backs stopped bracing for hits seconds before impact. The unit’s unpredictability was replaced with order. “Vince always comes out and says the defense was better under him, but it’s just not true,” said Jay Hilgenberg. “It was the attitude of our defense as an attacking defense that I think we lost. Buddy really brought that out. We weren’t as terrifying. Those were mean guys, but they got a little more gentle.”

  Along with defensive coordinator, the other spot that damned the ’86 Bears was quarterback. McMahon started four of Chicago’s first six games, but his body was halfway to the morgue. He could barely move his right shoulder. “My arm was coming out of the socket,” he said. “It was from an injury I first had in high school. I kept telling the doctor what was wrong. He said, ‘That can’t be happening. Do you know how painful that is?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know. Happens every day.’ ” McMahon sat out the seventh game, which the Steve Fuller–led Bears lost at Minnesota, 23–7. At a team meeting the next day, Dan Hampton, the veteran defensive lineman, lit into McMahon. “I liked Jim and I still like Jim,” Hampton said. “I think the combination of a lackadaisical approach to the game, the lackadaisical approach to being ready as a team, all those little things contributed.”

  With McMahon sidelined and team unity cracking apart, Chicago made a personnel decision that, in hindsight, crushed hopes of a repeat. Despite having a pair of backups on the roster (Fuller and Mike Tomczak), the Bears sent two draft picks to the Rams for the rights to Doug Flutie, the 1984 Heisman Trophy winner at Boston College. A five-foot-ten, 180-pound piano stool of a quarterback, Flutie had recently completed his rookie season with the New Jersey Generals of the now-defunct USFL. Immortalized for his last-second Hail Mary to upset the University of Miami as a senior, Flutie was a near-iconic sports figure.

  Bears players decided they had no use for him.

  Chicago was McMahon’s team. And McMahon was a schoolyard bully. On the day after the trade, he showed up at practice sporting a red No. 22 jersey, the same one Flutie had worn in college and with the Generals. McMahon derisively referred to Flutie as “America’s midget,” and later mocked him while appearing on The Tonight Show. Teammates enthusiastically joined in.

  “I was shocked we even considered taking him,” Otis Wilson told the Tribune. “Nobody else picked him up, so why would we? Flutie has one play—that Hail Mary.”

  Asked how much he thought Flutie was worth to the Bears, Wilson shrugged. “How much change I got in my pocket?” he asked.

  When Flutie entered the locker room for the first time, he felt the Lake Michigan chill. McMahon ignored him, as did most of the other players. “I was unwanted,” he said, “and I knew it.” Then Flutie was spotted by Payton. With the entire team watching, he walked up to the new quarterback, extended his hand, and said, “I’m Walter Payton—glad to have you here!” He directed Flutie to the entrance of the locker room, where a crude sign, made from copy paper and Magic Marker, hung from the door. NO PLAYERS UNDER 5’8” ALLOWED, it read. Payton grinned sheepishly. The handwriting was his.

  “He ignored the whole McMahon thing and acted as a buffer for me,” said Flutie. “There were only a handful of guys who went out of their way to make me feel comfortable, and Walter was one of them. He was such a wonderful man.”

  Seven weeks into his tenure with the Bears, Flutie finally made an impact. He replaced Tomczak in the second quarter of a game against Tampa Bay, hit Willie Gault for a fifty-two-yard gain on his first completion, and connected with Payton for a twenty-seven-yard touchdown on his second. After exchanging hugs with jovial teammates, Payton took the ball and handed it to a fan. Later, when he was reminded that it had been Flutie’s first NFL touchdown pass, Payton used the postgame press conference to ask that the ball be returned. “Walter being Walter, the fan actually brought it back,” Flutie said. “He was beloved, and with great reason.”

  Unfortunately for the Bears, Flutie Fever failed to last. Ditka made the mistake of inviting his new quarterback to his house for Thanksgiving dinner, and the McMahon-led peanut gallery teed off. “It was Jim’s insecurity, and it was wrong
,” Hilgenberg said. “Doug was a super guy, and he was exciting to have out there. He was the right guy to have starting. But we hurt ourselves by making it so hard on him.”

  On January 3, 1987, the Bears hosted the Redskins in a divisional play-off game at Soldier Field. With a league-best 14-2 record, Chicago remained the oddsmaker’s favorites to return to the Super Bowl. It was not to be. Flutie completed only eleven of thirty-one passes and threw two interceptions. The Washington defense ganged up on Payton, holding him to thirty-eight yards on fourteen carries. With the Redskins leading 14–13 midway through the third quarter, the Bears pieced together a drive. Dennis Gentry returned the kickoff forty-eight yards to Washington’s forty-two. Anderson swept eleven yards, then Calvin Thomas drove up the middle for thirteen more yards to the eighteen. “We were really coming off the ball there,” said Covert.

  On the ensuing play Payton was hit by Washington’s Darryl Grant. He fumbled, and the Redskins recovered. Drive dead. Momentum gone. The Bears lost 27–13.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Payton said. “You don’t have to ask if I’m disappointed.”

  Afterward, a drained Payton sat by his locker and contemplated football mortality. He was thirty-three years old, and battered worse than ever. Every muscle hurt. Every joint ached. In the moments before the game, Caito, the team’s trainer, had inserted a large needle beneath the nail on Payton’s right big toe—yet another temporary remedy for the turf toe that ached with each step. Payton’s forehead beaded with sweat. His hands shook. “He would grab my arm as the needle went into his skin,” said Shaun Gayle, a defensive back. “The pain must have been excruciating.” Though also burdened by a dislocated toe on the other foot that radiated anguish, Payton never used the maladies as excuses. “Instead of appearing like the old Walter Payton,” Gary Pomerantz wrote in The Washington Post, “he just appeared old.” The loss to Washington marked the seventh straight game in which he failed to crack a hundred yards. The fumble was his sixth in seven games. Across the league, word was out that Payton had lost much of what had made him extraordinary.

  “My goal is sixteen hundred [yards] for next year,” he said defiantly. “If Neal wants my job, if Thomas Sanders wants my job, if Matt [Suhey] wants my job, they’ll have to be so good they’re going to lead the league in everything and be the most valuable player because I’m going to work my butt off to attain that.”

  Little did Payton know, the Chicago Bears had a decidedly different plan.

  “There is no loyalty in sports,” the man said. He was sitting at a bar, robotically downing one cup of coffee after another. “No loyalty. None. Zero.”

  Mike Ditka was on a roll. Twenty-three years had passed since Walter Payton prepared for his final season as a Chicago Bear, and the coach was still livid. “You’re a commodity,” he said. “You’re paid, and when you can’t produce, you’re gone. There’s no loyalty. And as the coach, I’m the one in the middle—if you’re loyal, you’re stuck. Because then you have to defend the reason you’re loyal. And I mean, it’s just the way it is. There’s no loyalty.”

  Though time supposedly heals all wounds, it hasn’t touched this one. Entering the 1987 season, Ditka—who took few marching orders—was given very specific ones by Michael McCaskey, the Bears’ president: If you want to continue to coach this team, you’ll phase out Walter Payton and phase in Neal Anderson.

  Though often lampooned as one, Ditka is hardly a fool. He certainly recognized the signs of a fading star, and Payton was showing all sorts of them. Why, in the February 1 Pro Bowl in Honolulu, Payton fumbled yet again, this time with the NFC driving deep into AFC territory. Once upon a time he lost a handful of fumbles a season. Now he seemed to be losing one every game.

  Despite this, Ditka still believed that Payton should, at worst, split carries with Anderson; that he remained a hard-nosed workhorse who could be counted on for one thousand yards and eight to ten touchdowns in 1987. “I had no intent of starting Neal over Walter,” Ditka said. “It wasn’t time yet.”

  That was the coach’s opinion. The front office, however, had other ideas. Shortly after the conclusion of the 1986 season, Bud Holmes received a call from McCaskey, who was blunt in his assessment of Payton’s remaining value. “We’re ready for Walter to come to the conclusion of his career,” McCaskey said. “But we want to do it in the best way possible. We don’t want to let Sweetness go, but we have other plans for the upcoming year.”

  Holmes wasn’t shocked, merely disappointed. Payton’s contract had expired, and he was looking for one final deal. Holmes knew his client believed he had another two or three quality seasons left in his body, and he wanted Payton—not the suits in Chicago’s administrative suites—determining his own exit. And yet, Holmes, like Ditka, knew whereof he spoke. Approaching his thirty-fourth birthday, Payton had reached a point of diminishing returns. He couldn’t cut like he used to. His pass routes lacked the crispness of previous years. Worst of all, he always seemed to be suffering. Throughout his career, Payton had taken tremendous pride in his toughness. Teammates loaded up on injections, and Payton refused to go anywhere near a needle. Teammates complained openly about this sprain, that bruise, this twist, that gash—and Payton kept quiet. Steroids were all over Chicago’s locker room (said Fred Caito, the longtime trainer: “If we turned in guys for using steroids, half the team would be gone.”), but Payton refused to touch them.

  Now, however, he was regularly popping the painkiller Darvon, numbing his maladies as he also ignored the side-effect warnings. Doctors across the U.S. prescribed the drug—in moderation—as a painkiller, as well as for the treatment of diarrhea. In large doses, however, Darvon was believed by many watchdog groups to be a contributor to suicide. It resulted in shallow breathing, slow heartbeat, confusion, seizures, and jaundice. With alcohol, it caused—among other things—liver damage. The suggested dosage was one 65 mg tablet every four hours. Payton’s intake far exceeded this.

  Holmes didn’t love the idea of a reduced Payton enduring the suffering of more hits, but he wanted his client to go out the right way. When McCaskey told the agent the organization might be forced to cut its greatest star, Holmes countered with an offer of his own. In mid-May, Payton and Holmes had flown to New York to meet with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle about the possibility of becoming the league’s first minority owner. Thanks to the efforts of Jesse Jackson, who was putting public pressure on Major League Baseball and the NFL to hire more minorities as managers, coaches, and front-office executives, Rozelle was intrigued by the idea of Payton one day heading an expansion outfit. “Rozelle said he would give Walter one of two things—the right to lead a team in Oakland or the right to do so in Phoenix,” Holmes said. “We wanted Arizona, but there were already other people focused on that location. So I met with the Oakland people, and we had a deal tentatively worked out where Walter would come out there and they’d put up money, build a stadium, and hope for the best outcome.”

  A couple of days later, Holmes met with Walter and Connie at their home. He laid out all the possibilities, then asked, bluntly, “Walter, are you ready to move on, or do you want to keep playing until you no longer can?” Payton had spent the off-season hearing the whispers about his fate. The talk was embarrassing, agonizing, infuriating. In the way all great athletes know they can still play (even when they can’t), Payton was certain the Bears needed him. “Alexander cried when there were no worlds left to conquer,” Holmes told him. “You’ve already broken all these records. And if I can work it out where you now become the first black owner, should we go after it?”

  Payton lived for football. For the locker room camaraderie. For the thrill of a long run down the sideline, of a crushing block, of a diving catch. Though he had always wanted to be thought of as more than merely a jock, he was—at heart—a jock. Football was his life.

  “OK,” he told Holmes. “One more season.”

  With that, Holmes telephoned McCaskey with a proposal. Walter desired a one-year, one-mi
llion-dollar deal (with an option for a second season, just in case Payton shocked the masses with a fifteen-hundred-yard output), along with a (seemingly temporary) position in Chicago’s front office and a commitment from the team to immediately retire his No. 34 jersey.

  “I’m sorry,” said McCaskey. “We don’t retire jerseys.”

  “Well, that’s a deal breaker,” said Holmes. “You’ll have to cut Walter Payton.”

  Few negotiators could bluff like Holmes, whose Southern charm and perceived dopiness made for a lethal combination. Was he the model representative for a man trying to purchase his own franchise? Not particularly. Holmes had recently been disbarred by the Mississippi Bar Association after pleading guilty to misconduct before a federal grand jury. But Payton was justifiably loyal, and Holmes took pride in being the small-town Mississippi bumpkin who outwitted the big guns.

  “We don’t want to do that,” McCaskey said.

  “I know,” said Holmes. “I want him to be able to say he quit to become an NFL owner. It’s good for Walter, it’s good for the Bears.”

  On July 28, 1987, at the Bears’ Lake Forest facility, Payton announced that he would play one more season, then retire. “Nothing is final,” he said. “But at this point that’s what my thinking is. Unless something happens and Mr. McCaskey comes to me and says, ‘Come back next year,’ it looks like this will be the last one.

  “Walter Payton never quits,” he said. “I would say, ‘Walter Payton has started in [a new] direction.’ I feel I could play another three years and be productive. But the hardest thing for me to do is say, ‘I know I can play; I want to play, but I’m going to stop.’ It’s something I feel I have to do.”