Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Payton was incredulous. OK? OK? Stabler was a four-time Pro Bowler who led the Raiders to victory in Super Bowl XI. The Bears, meanwhile, were continuing their maddening, never-ending tactic of sticking with one quarterback until that person messed up. Avellini, underwhelming in all phases, started the first three games before giving way to Evans, an athletic phenomenon whose balls went everywhere but straight. “Vince,” said Tim Clifford, one of Evans’ backups in later years, “was a quarterback who would have been better off playing linebacker.” He lasted three starts as well, until Mike Phipps, thirty-two years old and in his tenth NFL season, took over. Together, the three men combined for fifteen touchdowns and sixteen interceptions. “We all got along well, because I think we bonded over the pathetic nature of our offense,” said Avellini. “Me, Vince, and Mike were fighting for the job, and we had no receivers to speak of. San Diego gets rid of a wide receiver like John Jefferson [after the 1980 season], and instead of finding a way to get him, we get Golden Richards, the worst player I ever played with. That kind of thing brought us quarterbacks even closer. People blamed us, and probably with some good reason. But we weren’t alone. The efforts to improve our team were pathetic.”

  Particularly depressing was the Bears’ October 28 trip to San Francisco, where they faced a 49ers team coached by Bill Walsh, the man Finks failed to hire as head coach. Though he was burdened with a shabby roster filled with crumbs and leftovers, Walsh’s revolutionary West Coast offense rolled up 455 total yards against the Bears. Steve DeBerg, a quarterback no more talented than any of Chicago’s, passed for 348 yards and three touchdowns, and the Bears could only watch and dream. Though they won 28–27, it felt like a defeat. “To think of what we could have been doing under Walsh,” said Avellini. “It was torturous.”

  By virtue of their 10-6 record, on December 23 the Bears traveled to Philadelphia to play in the NFC Wild Card game. Though the Eagles captured the NFC East title with an 11-5 mark, Chicago’s players were confident. When asked about Harold Carmichael, Philadelphia’s star receiver, defensive back Allan Ellis shrugged. “What about him?” he said. “The thing about Carmichael is you have the challenge of not forgetting the other receiver . . . I forgot his name.”

  “We have as good a chance to go to the Super Bowl,” added Armstrong, “as any other team.”

  Known throughout the league as home to the most vile, most insidious fans, Veterans Stadium was a miserable place to play. The screams were loud, the taunts were tasteless, the artificial surface flimsy and unforgiving. Yet despite being three-point underdogs, the Bears came ready to play. Payton punched it in for two first-half touchdowns, and at halftime Armstrong’s scrappy team held a 17–10 lead.

  Early in the third quarter, on first and ten at their own fifteen, the Bears called for Z Crack 28. Phipps handed the ball to Payton, who—despite suffering from a painful pinched nerve in his shoulder—busted wide right, turned upfield and took off. He ran eighty-four yards to the Eagles’ one before being pulled down by cornerback Herm Edwards. “That was the prettiest run I’ve ever seen,” said Claude Humphrey, an Eagles defensive end. “I was on the field, and the way he ran after he broke into the secondary, he looked like a fine racehorse taking off into the open.”

  There was one problem. Seconds before the ball was snapped, receiver Brian Baschnagel moved. The left-to-right trot was legal to everyone in the stadium, but not referee Red Cashion, who threw a flag and penalized the Bears for illegal motion. “The official told me I was going toward the line when the ball was snapped,” said Baschnagel. “I was confused and uncertain about what I’d done. The next training camp Dave McNally, the NFL’s head of officials, came to talk to us about the rules. He walks into the room and said, ‘Before anyone says anything, it was a bad call.’ ” Payton’s eighty-four-yard scamper was voided. Momentum vanished. “From there,” wrote the Tribune’s Bob Verdi, “the Bears slipped from great expectations into the Schuylkill River.”

  Chicago wound up punting—and losing, 27–17.

  Following the game, the locker room was library quiet. Even though his gut told him the officials had erred, Baschnagel was devastated. The stereotypical scrappy, slow, undersized (five foot eleven, 187 pounds) white receiver, Baschnagel stuck for ten years with the Bears primarily because of his attitude. “You wished all your players had his heart,” said Armstrong. “He was like Walter in his devotion to hard work.” Baschnagel’s parents, Arthur and Dorothy, Philadelphia residents, had attended the game, as did his younger brother, Steve. The day meant everything to him. “I had my head down in my locker, hurting,” he said. “And at that moment Doug Gerhart, our receivers coach and someone I was very close with, told me in private he’d be leaving coaching to get into the family business. The combination of the loss, the penalty, and Doug’s words got me glassy-eyed, and I started crying. Walter comes up, puts his arm around me, and he said, ‘Brian, I know you feel terrible about that call.’ And he consoled me and said, ‘If everybody on the team had the attitude you have, we’d be going to the Super Bowl.’

  “It was so classy. Walter had eighty-four yards taken away from him. He easily could have blamed me. Instead, he saw I was hurting and tried to make me feel better. I’ll never forget that.

  “Never.”

  The Philadelphia Eagles advanced to the Super Bowl.

  The Chicago Bears went home.

  Payton spoke optimistically of better days to come; of a franchise headed in the right direction. He was encouraged by some of the changes being made from within. In the summer of 1980 the team moved into Halas Hall, the $1.6-million meeting spot/dormitory/operations center located adjacent to Lake Forest College’s Farwell Field. No longer were the Bears’ facilities fourth-rate. No longer would players think of the team as a haven for cheapskates.

  Despite Finks’ failure to land a quarterback of note, high-quality drafts were slowly beginning to yield results. “I don’t like the word ‘building,’ ” Finks said. “I just think we have the right people here to continue being a good football team.” In 1979, the Bears used their two first-round picks on defensive players, a tackle out of Arkansas named Dan Hampton and a defensive end from Arizona State named Al Harris. The two became key contributors, and started for most of the ensuing decade.

  The following year, Finks once again hit big in the first round, selecting an athletic linebacker from Louisville named Otis Wilson. Payton was ecstatic (the Bears’ overall philosophy started with defense, and he was comfortable with that) until he learned that Finks spent a second-round selection on a fullback.

  In taking Matt Suhey, a five-foot-eleven, 217-pound bowling ball out of Penn State, Chicago seemed to be giving up on Roland Harper, Payton’s longtime blocking back who missed the entire 1979 season with a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

  Although not quite as tight as they had been as rookies, Payton and Harper remained close friends and devoted on-field comrades. Dave Williams did a serviceable job in Harper’s stead, but Payton missed the crushing blocks that had been his pal’s staple. As the Bears won ten games and advanced to the postseason, Harper watched from his couch, miserable and depressed. “I prayed,” Harper said, explaining his recovery. “I prayed for His will to be done. If He gives you the strength, that’s all you need.”

  Payton applauded Harper’s efforts. He encouraged him and cheered for him and assumed normalcy would return in 1980.

  Then, Suhey arrived.

  Payton hated him immediately. “Walter assumed I was brought in to get rid of Roland,” said Suhey. “He wasn’t nice to me at all. He didn’t talk to me and barely acknowledged me.” Suhey long believed that Payton’s negativity was solely about Harper. It was, however, more than that. For the first time, Payton was able to see the reality of his inevitable gridiron mortality. Harper had been one of the Bears’ offensive captains for three seasons. He was quiet and respectful and universally beloved by coaches, players, and administrators. He played hard and worked out ev
en harder.

  What did it say about the Bears—about the NFL—that all the sacrifice and effort rendered Harper replaceable? One day, Payton realized, he would be replaceable, too.

  Although Harper returned to start twelve games in 1980 (and limit Suhey to special teams duties), Payton was shaken by what Suhey’s arrival signified. He was also shaken by the death of hope and optimism. Based upon their previous campaign, Chicago was the thinking man’s pick to win the NFC Central and, just maybe, the Super Bowl. Yet the ’80 Bears were once again dreadful, finishing 7-9 as an all-engulfing listlessness cloaked the offense. The discipline that Pardee once tried to instill had all but vanished. John Schulian, a columnist for the Sun-Times, recalled watching Evans and Payton, standing ten feet apart along the sideline during practices, blistering the ball to one another. “It was begging Walter to break a finger or hand, and a person with real authority steps in and stops it,” said Schulian. “But Neill didn’t say anything because Walter was bigger than the team. It was a sad scene.”

  What irked Payton most was the offensive coaching staff’s continued devotion to dull, outmoded football. On the other side of the ball, defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan had transformed his unit into a snarling, barking, growling pack of animals. “If I never face another defense like them, it’ll be too soon,” Cleveland quarterback Brian Sipe said. “They’re terrific.” The Bears defense ranked fourth in the league, and while the talents of players like Hampton, Wilson, and hard-hitting safeties Gary Fencik and Doug Plank were substantial, it was Ryan’s attitude and gusto that fed the monster. “Buddy took the players he had and said, ‘I’m gonna design a scheme for these players and make it work,’ ” said Plank. “And we fought for him. There were times he’d ask two safeties to be linebackers and we’d think, ‘What are you doing?’ But Buddy believed in us, so we believed in him. You wanted to win for him.” Throughout the week, Ryan encouraged his players to punish those on the other side of the ball. Defensive linemen threw punches, cornerbacks taunted, linebackers gauged eyes and pulled hair. The result was a strained locker room, as well as a gaggle of black-and-blue offensive linemen and receivers. The only player defenders couldn’t mess with was Payton. “That’s because of how much respect and love I had for Walter,” said Ryan. “I counted him as a defensive player, because if our quarterback threw an interception it’d almost always be Walter making the tackle. Also, I didn’t want my guys hitting him because he was all we had. Without Walter, we wouldn’t have scored a point.”

  On November 3, in a nationally televised Monday Night Football game in Cleveland, the offense hit a new low. With the Browns leading 3–0 early in the second quarter, Chicago marched down to the Cleveland twenty-three-yard line. Facing a third-and-eleven, Ken Meyer, the offensive coordinator, called a draw play to Payton. “A resoundingly innovative draw play,” Bob Verdi wrote in the next morning’s Tribune. “It put the Bears five yards closer to a field goal, which they missed. But that’s not the point. Going for three points on third down, let alone fourth down, is the point.”

  Payton’s frustration mounted with each loss. He complained to the media about the pounding he was taking (Payton often joked with John Skibinski, a white fullback, that “It’s hard to see the bruises on a black guy.”), and rightly wondered whether Chicago would ever field a Super Bowl–caliber club. By season’s end, Payton had turned into the one thing he thought he would never become: a man after the money. As Bud Holmes reminded him on multiple occasions, winning wasn’t the only way to win. According to his contract, Payton could earn an extra ten thousand dollars for clearing twelve hundred yards, five thousand dollars for fifteen hundred yards, seventy-five hundred dollars for two thousand yards and seventy-five hundred dollars for being involved in 70 percent of the Bears’ offensive plays. On December 7, as Chicago cruised to a meaningless 61–7 home decimation of Green Bay, Payton kept on running. And running. And running. He scored his third touchdown to make the score 48–7, then defied Armstrong by returning to the game when the scoreboard read 55–7. “When you see guys like him coming back in with the score that lopsided, it kind of sticks in your mind,” Estus Hood, a Packers cornerback, said afterward. “We’ll remember it next time.” By the time the final whistle blew, Payton had run for 130 yards on twenty-two carries, vaulting ahead of Detroit’s Billy Sims and the Cardinals’ Ottis Anderson into the NFC rushing lead. It was a rare happy moment in an otherwise dark run. “He wants that rushing title,” guard Noah Jackson laughed afterward. “Probably means ten thousand dollars, and I get a piece of that rock, too.”

  Payton’s 1,460 yards led the NFC.

  Although 1980 had been a dispiriting year for Payton, it ended well. On December 26, Connie gave birth to the couple’s first child, a boy named Jarrett Walter (he was named after a character from the television program, The Big Valley). “My son brought me tremendous joy and inspiration,” Payton said. “I looked at him like he was going to be my hero someday.”

  When it came to nurturing and coddling a baby, Walter—like most male professional athletes of the era—knew little. Diaper changing was something a wife or nanny did. So was feeding. And pushing the stroller. And waking up in the middle of the night for a soothing moment in the rocking chair. Payton was elated to have a son, and when asked, he offered up all the right quotes. (“I want to give my child all the love I can.”) But he wasn’t a hands-on, heavily involved dad in the beginning.

  One thing Payton felt compelled to do, though, was make certain Jarrett had a proper baptism. Which meant he first had to have a proper godfather.

  Shortly after Jarrett’s birth, Payton called Ron Atlas, his friend who owned the swimming pool store, and told him he was coming over for a visit. “Ron,” Payton said, “I want you to be Jarrett’s godfather. Are you up for that?”

  “I’m honored,” Atlas replied. “But you know I’m Jewish, right?”

  “I don’t care,” Payton replied. “But just so you know, you have some real responsibilities.”

  “Like what?” Atlas asked.

  “Like getting him baptized,” Payton replied.

  “Baptized,” Atlas said. “I’m a Jew. What the hell am I gonna do about that?”

  Payton shrugged. “Not my problem,” he said. “Yours.”

  The next day, Atlas telephoned the offices of Rainbow PUSH, Jesse Jackson’s religious and social development organization. He asked for the minister, and was shocked when he picked up the phone. “Reverend Jackson,” Atlas said, “you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I’m friends with Walter Payton and I have to get his son baptized. I’m Jewish, and I have no idea what I’m—”

  Jackson interrupted. “Mr. Atlas,” he said, “leave it all to me.”

  Two weeks later, Jarrett Payton was baptized by Jesse Jackson inside a ballroom at the Hilton in Arlington Heights. More than two hundred people attended the ceremony, and even Walter had to admit his friend did a heck of a job. “I was feeling great, because I’d pulled it off,” Atlas said. “At the end of the night a stranger came up to me and said, ‘Do you have the envelope for Reverend Jackson?’ ”

  “What envelope?” Atlas asked.

  “The one,” he said, “with the money in it?”

  “I gave five hundred dollars,” said Atlas. “Well worth the price of admission.”

  Entering 1980, Payton genuinely believed the Bears had a chance of contending for the NFC title. Entering 1981, Payton knew the reality at hand: His team was horrible.

  Worst of all, there was no escape. With the expiration of the third of the three one-year contracts he had signed in 1978, the NFL’s top running back was, technically, a free agent, available for all twenty-eight teams to bid on. Yet free agency in the National Football League was merely a mirage. Not only did a player’s last team have the right to match any offer, but widespread collusion among owners made said offers nonexistent (all teams were guaranteed $5.8 million annually via the NFL’s television deal, thereby eliminating the need to spend on fr
ee agents to actually improve their teams). Here was Payton, twenty-eight years old, in his prime, and wildly popular, and no other teams requested meetings. “I talked to a lot of clubs, just social conversation,” Holmes said. “No one ever acted seriously.”

  When Holmes told the Tribune Payton would demand one million dollars annually, George Halas, the team owner, laughed. “There’s no way we’re going to pay him that,” he said—and he was correct. The Bears held all the cards.

  Having been brought up with little money, the young Payton was generally disinterested in his own finances. He made a few investments, only checked his books every so often, trusted Holmes enough to assume the agent would do him right. Now, however, with the birth of Jarrett, his bank account became an understandably greater priority.

  That’s why, when the NFL’s owners colluded against him, Payton turned his attention north, where the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League were plotting an invasion. Under the new ownership of a forty-three-year-old real estate magnate named Nelson Skalbania, the Alouettes were in the midst of an NFL raid that left the American league shuddering. Within a week’s time, Skalbania had signed Vince Ferragamo, the star quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams, and James Scott, the moody-yet-skilled Bears receiver. Payton was the next—and biggest—target on his hit list. “I’ve offered Payton a contract,” Skalbania said. “I shouldn’t be saying this because, when you print it, the Chicago Bears are going to realize the situation and the price will go up. But I need a good running back.”

  Though Payton didn’t want to leave the NFL, he couldn’t ignore Montreal’s offer, which was rumored to be around eight hundred thousand dollars annually. (“If Tokyo has a team,” Payton said, “even they’re a possibility.”) Nor, for that matter, could the Bears, a franchise with a single star and a bleak future without him.