Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  In the year 1975, a significant racial divide still existed in professional sports. White teammates hung with white teammates and black teammates hung with black teammates. There was a lingering mistrust and a pronounced lack of understanding. Locker room card games were split among racial lines. The tension over music was palpable—country and rock vs. R&B. To many of the black Bears, their white teammates seemed stiff and judgmental. How could they possibly trust the Southerners from schools like Alabama and Auburn and Ole Miss—the ones who seemed perpetually uncomfortable in their presence?

  A good number of the white Bears, meanwhile, didn’t like what they perceived to be the never-ending crowing and strutting of the blacks. They found the players to be lazy, selfish, and heartless. All skill, no drive. “When I got there we had a bunch of niggers,” said Rives, a white linebacker from 1973 to 1978. “Great ability, but no work ethic. They were selfish twits, and they wanted to blame everyone but themselves.”

  Just as he had done at Columbia High School five years earlier, Payton somehow bridged the gap. Entering camp, Chicago’s top two returning running backs were Ken Grandberry, an unremarkable grinder who had led the team with 475 rushing yards in 1974, and Carl Garrett, the cocky former Pro Bowler. “Walter was different,” said Rives. “His biggest attribute was the fire in his gut, where he honestly believed nobody could stop him. I loved that.”

  Payton didn’t merely impress teammates—he wowed them. Steve Marcantonio, the team’s fifteenth-round draft choice out of the University of Miami, had never heard of Payton until they arrived together at camp. One day all the players were required to partake in varied physical tests—bench press, curls, push-ups, sprints. “I was a six-foot-six, two-hundred-and-onepound possession receiver going against all these great athletes,” said Marcantonio. “I didn’t stand much of a chance.” The final activity was dips, where a person stands between two parallel bars and lifts himself up and down as many times as possible. “Back in college I used to finish every workout with three sets of twenty dips, so I finally felt there was something I could excel in,” said Marcantonio. “We go through most of the testing, and sure enough near the end I’ve smoked everybody. The second-best guy did thirty-seven, and now it’s me and Walter lined up next to each other. We’re the final two.” Marcantonio put on his game face, took a deep breath, and completed fifty-six straight dips—easily a personal record. “Everyone was so impressed,” he said. “I felt great.” When Marcantonio finished, Payton—who had never before lifted weights or attempted a dip—approached the bars. “He was just this blur, up and down, up and down, up and down,” said Marcantonio. “He gets to sixty-five and he looks over at me with this expression on his face like, ‘Is this enough?’ I just shrugged. He was too much.”

  Members of the Bears were blown away by their new star’s physicality. Payton’s legs looked like black pipes. His back was immense. He dead-lifted 625 pounds without a sweat. His hands, seemingly regular at quick glance, were thick and dense like slices of cheesecake. “You shook hands,” said Jerry B. Jenkins, the coauthor of one of Payton’s autobiographies, “and his wrapped all the way around yours.”

  Mark Nordquist, a veteran offensive lineman who had recently been traded to the Bears by the Eagles, spent the summer of 1975 working harder than ever. He lifted weights four or five times per week, and reported to Lake Forest with an extra thirty pounds of rock-solid muscle encasing his body. When it came time for the Bears to grade the players on the military press, Nordquist silenced the room by warming up with a handful of 250-pound lifts. “Then I put the pin at the bottom of the weight set to three hundred and ten pounds,” he said, “and the room got even quieter, because nobody ever did that.” After taking several deep breaths, Nordquist grunted loudly, pushed and lifted the weight. “I staggered away, breathing hard,” he said. “Walter walks up, sits on the stool, and grabs the bar. I’m pointing at him, laughing, ‘Watch this idiot rookie!’ Well, Payton takes the bar and lifts it really fast—one, two, three times. Three times! He’s five foot ten, two hundred and five pounds, I’m six foot four, two-sixty-five. The guys in the weight room screamed, ‘There’s a new sheriff in town! There’s a new sheriff!’ ”

  Despite some high moments, Payton’s training camp was mostly misery. He missed the first four exhibition games because of the elbow infection, and when Parsons, the team’s punter, suffered a twisted knee, Pardee considered having Payton take his place, just to keep him involved. While booting balls during a practice, however, Payton strained a muscle in his left leg, further stalling his progress. For the first time as Chicago’s coach, Pardee lost his cool. “Jack was fed up with Walter always being hurt,” said Richard Harris, a Bears defensive lineman. “He wanted to determine if Walter was a prima donna or a real player.” With the entire roster sitting inside a classroom for a meeting, Pardee called Payton to the front and chewed him out. “If we knew you’d be the kind of guy you are,” he said, “there’s no way we would have wasted our number one pick on you!”

  Finally, on September 6, Payton debuted at Miami’s Orange Bowl against the Dolphins. As Don Pierson noted in that day’s Chicago Tribune, Walter “has been practicing as if this were the Super Bowl. He has run every play at full speed and gets to the hole so fast he looks like he’d been catapulted out of a slingshot.”

  The game began at eight o’clock that night, and Payton was nervous. He paced the sidelines beforehand, muttering words of encouragement to himself while avoiding eye contact with teammates. The expectations of others were high, but the expectations for himself were even higher. Payton knew Chicago fans had been waiting to see what the kid from Jackson State could do. Was he the second coming of Gale Sayers, or merely another Ken Grandberry?

  On that hot, muggy night, the answer came quickly. In yet another Bear defeat (Chicago lost 21–10), Payton was brilliant. He ran for sixty yards on twelve first-half carries, including bursts of sixteen and twelve yards. Payton had been scheduled to sit the remainder of the game, but after begging Pardee for extra work, he stayed in for much of the third and fourth quarters, gaining an additional thirty-four yards. “He was remarkable,” said Waymond Bryant, a Bears linebacker. “The thing I remember is his cuts were so quick and so sharp, he made guys miss with ease. This guy was clearly better than anyone we had.”

  Payton played sparingly in the Bears’ final exhibition game, a loss to the Oilers. In case there were any remaining doubts about the direction of the franchise, Finks and Pardee made clear the point: Garrett (who assured the media Payton would never take his job) was traded to the New York Jets for Mike Adamle, and Grandberry—the leading ground gainer from one season earlier—was cut, never again to appear in an NFL game.

  “They told me not to worry, that I had a job locked up,” Grandberry said. “Then they cut me. I was destroyed. It took my spirit away. Walter actually apologized to me for taking my job, and I said, ‘You have nothing to be sorry about. You’re terrific.’

  “Years later my dad said to me, ‘Yeah, you lost your job. But you lost it to Walter Payton. Who better to end your career?’ ”

  Grandberry laughs.

  “I hated to admit it, but Dad was right. Who better than Walter Payton?”

  CHAPTER 12

  ZERO YARDS

  AT THE START OF EACH NFL SEASON, BEFORE GAMES HAVE BEGUN AND INJURIES have occurred and expectations fail to meet reality, optimism is an organizational requirement. As the mindless blather goes, “Every team is 0-0” and “With a few breaks . . .” and “If everyone lives up to their potential . . .” It makes no difference whether your franchise is plagued by a roster of talentless dopes, whether your coach is an alcoholic and your GM a heroin addict, whether you haven’t won since Washington crossed the Delaware.

  This, at long last, will be the year!

  As the 1975 season opener approached, the city of Chicago felt like their Bears were on the rise. These were the new Bears. The young Bears. The better-than-before Bears. The potentially play-
off-bound Bears who had languished in the depths of the NFC Central for far too long. Sixteen rookies made the opening-day roster. Ten starters from the disastrous ’74 club were cut. In a piece titled “Bears are putting it all together,” the Tribune’s Don Pierson welcomed in the season by noting that, “With a new attitude, a new general manager, new coach, new players, and a proven old formula, a new era of success cannot be avoided.”

  On the afternoon of Sunday, September 21, the new Chicago Bears debuted in front of a sellout crowd of 51,678 fans packed into Soldier Field. In the lead-up to the game, the Tribune’s Ed Stone wrote a glowing profile of Payton, hyping the rookie as the team’s savior and including this dandy of a quote from the naïve newcomer: “Give me time, I’ll give ’em a new Sayers.”

  In case any of the longtime holdovers thought things had changed, however, they were quickly reminded the Bears were the Bears. Two hours before kickoff, as the team was warming up on the field, a thick cast-iron sewage pipe exploded beneath the home concrete locker room, spreading a gusher of liquid waste. By the time the maintenance crew plugged the hole, six inches of brown sludge coated the floor. “It was a nightmare,” said Bob Newton, an offensive lineman. “The whole room flooded, and we had to take all our gear across Soldier Field and dress on the visiting side.”

  “That was our greeting to Chicago in 1975,” said Fred O’Connor, the backfield coach. “A foot of sewage.”

  It turned out to be the day’s highlight. Though the Colts had finished 2-12 in 1974, their new coach, Ted Marchibroda, knew enough about Chicago’s limited abilities to draw up a two-point defensive game plan:

  • Let quarterback Bobby Douglass throw all day.

  • Suffocate the rookie running back.

  “That was it,” said Joe Ehrmann, a Colts defensive tackle. “The entire goal was to stop Payton, who was supposed to be this stud, and have them have to pass.”

  “They were just a horrible team,” added Tom MacLeod, a Baltimore linebacker. “The coaches told us, ‘Watch out for the kid.’ So we did.”

  The weather was pleasant, with temperatures in the mid-fifties and the majority of players wearing only pads and T-shirts below their jerseys. A raucous ovation greeted the Bears as they took the field for the opening kickoff. Payton was euphoric. It had been a long, injury-marred preseason, and he often questioned whether this day would actually come.

  The Bears lost 35–7.

  When P.A. announcer Chet Coppock said, “The Bears thank you for your attendance,” deep into the fourth quarter, fans laughed. Even Baltimore took pity. Midway through the third quarter, Chicago defensive back Ted Vactor tore a calf muscle and could barely move. The only other available player, Nemiah Wilson, had already suffered an injury, so Vactor had to remain on the field. “I was lined up against [Colts receiver] Roger Carr,” said Vactor. “And he refused to run past me. He could have scored every time had he wanted to. But we were already dead and buried.” The day’s lone standing ovation was bestowed upon Abe Gibron, the fired head coach who watched from the stands. Wrote the Tribune’s Don Pierson, in a game recap that read like Roger Ebert’s Ishtar review: “The Bears offered no offense, no defense, and no expectations except the sewage. Pardee said he ‘hasn’t given up,’ which is comforting since it was their first game.... The Bears look as remodeled as their Soldier Field home—new paint and new names on the outside, same old problems on the inside. No one knew why the sewers apparently backed up in the Bears’ dressing room, any more than the Bears knew why the Colts, who really aren’t that good, beat the hell out of them.”

  Payton’s first carry of the day netted zero yards. His second carry of the day netted zero yards. His third carry went for three yards, but he lost ground on his next two attempts. Overall, Douglass handed Payton the football eight times, and he wound up with no yardage. When he exited the Bears’ locker room, tearstains could be spotted on both of his cheeks.

  “Zero yards for the number one pick?” he would later say. “I was so embarrassed. Like any rookie, I wanted to get to Chicago and prove I could play.”

  Truth is, Payton could play. His offensive line, however, was a mess. The six men blocking for him were an ode to NFL mediocrity. Center Dan Peiffer was the St. Louis Cardinals’ fourteenth-round pick in 1973, and right tackle Jeff Sevy was a Bears’ twelfth-round selection in ’74. Left guard Noah Jackson had recently been signed from the Canadian league, and right guards Bob Newton and Mark Nordquist—who, oddly, alternated downs while running in plays from the sideline—were marginal veterans. The most starcrossed of the bunch was Lionel Antoine, the third overall pick in the 1972 Draft (one spot ahead of Ahmad Rashad, ten ahead of Franco Harris). Coming out of Southern Illinois, George Halas had likened Antoine to the great left tackles in NFL history. He was big (six foot six), he was strong, and he smoked a pack of cigarettes during most halftimes. A serious knee injury in 1972 downgraded him from line anchor to mediocrity, and he never came close to realizing his potential. “Lionel was a fairly OK player,” said Ray Callahan, the team’s offensive line coach. “Not much more.”

  Against the Colts, Payton would take a handoff, move half a step, then—nothing. The lanes were clogged. “They kept trying to run sweeps and we kept tackling him for a loss,” said MacLeod. “He didn’t have a chance. He could never get started.”

  Throughout the game, Payton jogged to the sidelines and caught an earful from O’Connor, his position coach. The fans, too, reigned boos upon him, the likes of which he had never before heard. Only afterward, when coaches and teammates studied film from the debacle, did they notice something startling: Payton had pieced together the most breathtakingly inept game anyone had ever witnessed.

  “He ran for zero yards, but it was like I’d just watched someone gain a hundred and fifty,” said Mike Adamle, Payton’s backup. “He made a couple of moves in the backfield after he was trapped for losses just to get back to the line of scrimmage and I said, ‘This guy’s great.’ ”

  “When the coaches said we were going to run a sweep right or left, Walter had to make every inch by himself,” said Virg Carter, a backup quarterback. “Some of his runs to gain ten yards, he had to take on four or five guys on his own.”

  Many remained skeptical. After the final seconds had ticked off the clock and players from the two teams exchanged pleasantries, Ehrmann found himself jogging to the locker room alongside Stan White, Baltimore’s outstanding outside linebacker.

  “So much for the great Walter Payton,” Ehrmann said. “That kid will never make it.”

  Stuck in a foreign city, plagued by a certain brand of Southern shyness, bewildered by the plummeting temperature, the twenty-two-year-old Payton had few people to turn to. Unlike the majority of his fellow rookies, who basked in their newfound independence, Payton hungered for structure and familiarity. He lived with his mother Alyne in a small one-bedroom apartment in Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb. She cooked all of her son’s favorites (in particular, biscuits and gravy), folded his laundry, and took his messages, but wasn’t especially useful when it came to relieving him of his football-related anxieties. Eddie, his older brother, was off teaching high school P.E. in Memphis. They spoke via phone, but infrequently. Rickey Young, Payton’s blocking back at Jackson State, was a rookie with the San Diego Chargers, busy trying to navigate his own way through the league. “There were many two A.M. phone calls,” said Holmes. “Walter just needing to talk.” Connie Norwood, Walter’s girlfriend, was back at Jackson State, beginning her sophomore year. Her photograph sat atop his dresser, with each glance his mood growing increasingly forlorn. The two talked regularly (Payton only called from the Bears’ headquarters, where players could use the phone free of charge), and Connie would come to Chicago for occasional visits. Marriage seemed to him like a wise idea. “You can move here to the city,” he pleaded. “You’ll love it.” Connie knew better. She could wait.

  Sometimes Payton would take his 280ZX and tear through the back roads, zipping past traffic lig
hts and stop signs as the speedometer read 80 . . . 90 . . . 100 . . . 110. Other times he would lose himself in television—Starsky & Hutch, Kojak, Happy Days. Not one for the books, Payton’s reading would come either via the Chicago Tribune or the Bible, which he opened each morning before driving off for practice or games.

  Beginning with the preseason, many of Chicago’s players met for beers and burgers every Monday night. Payton occasionally stopped in, but quietly, and only for ten to fifteen minutes. Never did anyone see alcohol touch his lips. When the regular season began, members of the Bears would congregate in Soldier Field’s belowground parking lot after home games, then head out to the local bars and clubs. Payton almost never attended. “He didn’t know what to expect, so he was kind of standoffish,” said Bo Rather, a wide receiver. “Walter didn’t speak to many people. He was extraordinarily uncomfortable.”

  The headaches first arrived during the exhibition season, then refused to leave. The pain was akin to a drill digging into his temples. Payton had never suffered from pressure-related anxiety while at Jackson State, probably because there wasn’t much pressure. The Tigers were good, Payton was great, and winning came easily. Now the burden was overwhelming. “The headaches got really bad, to the point that he was missing practices,” said Steve Schubert, a Bears wide receiver. “The skill he had was unbelievable, but that first year was a real struggle.”

  “Walter was very sensitive, and he put a lot of pressure on himself,” said Peiffer. “Us not being a very good line surely exacerbated that.”