Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [105]
The remainder of the game was Payton ducking beneath tacklers, slashing through the secondary, eluding men double his size, and buckling the knees of Jimmy Johnson and Bruce Taylor, San Francisco’s veteran defensive backs. On the 49ers sideline running back Delvin Williams, a future Pro Bowler, couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. “The hardest thing to do is run when everyone knows you’re getting the football,” said Williams. “In those situations, you have to know where the flow is coming from and where the weakness of your blockers will be. You have to slow a bit, wait to make a move, then let it unfold. You use your ability and hope your teammates don’t get in your way. It’s extremely hard, yet Walter was out there doing it perfectly. And he was just a kid.”
In the aftermath of the win, an incredulous pack of reporters listened as Payton pooh-poohed his performance. “I should have scored at least four touchdowns,” he said. “And a hundred and forty-eight yards, that still wasn’t good enough. A couple of times I got caught in the backfield and I shouldn’t have.”
Beginning at Jackson State, and throughout his years with Chicago, Payton habitually talked down his own efforts, bemoaning a yard left on the field or a phantom touchdown that should have been. The device was all Bob Hill: The less the hype, the lower the expectations. “I’d say part of that was an act,” Avellini said. “Walter enjoyed being the star.”
Now, in the heart of the ’76 season, he suddenly was. Payton cleared 100 yards in three of the next four games, ripping through the Redskins for 104, then the Vikings for 141 and the Rams for 145. His weapon of choice was the stiff-arm, which Payton originally mastered on the sandlots of Columbia. When most running backs faced oncoming defenders, they lowered their heads and barreled ahead. With ever-increasing frequency, Payton opted to stick out his arm, jab an enemy in the face mask or sternum, and send him flailing. The highlight reels were now filled with the technique, one player after another dropping like a damp sandbag. “Other backs used stiff-arms, but Walter’s recoiled, then exploded into you,” said Frank Reed, a safety with the Atlanta Falcons “I mean, the dang thing stung. Once he hit you with that, it was KO.” Don Wedge, an NFL official for twenty-four years, said Payton was the only offensive player to regularly reach out and grab for defenders’ face masks. “It’d start as a stiff-arm and turn into a mugging,” said Wedge. “It was, technically, a penalty, but it was so rare for an offensive player to do it that we never called it on Walter. He was ruthless.”
Perhaps the most telling sign of Payton’s greatness was that he was, in baseball lingo, tipping his pitches—giving the defense advance warning of what he was going to do. When a handoff was designed to head right, Payton’s stance appeared normal. When a handoff was called for the left, however, Payton inadvertently lifted his right foot and tiptoed it forward seconds before the snap. “Other teams were well aware of it,” said Johnny Roland, at the time an assistant coach with the Eagles. “You’d watch tape of the Bears and see the tendency. But even though we knew it, there wasn’t much we could do. He could cut back so fast, so crisply, that he’d be gone quicker than you adjusted.”
Though the Bears were barely average, winning three of their first four before dropping three straight, Payton emerged as the fresh young face of the NFL. In mid-October the Los Angeles Times sent Elizabeth Wheeler to write a lengthy profile, the first time a national publication took serious note. Shortly thereafter, Sports Illustrated requested a detailed file on Payton from Kevin Lamb, a writer for the Chicago Daily News. Lamb’s words painted the narrative that Bud Holmes, Payton