Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [111]
Best of all, for the first time in three years Jack Pardee seemed committed to a high-powered offense. During the off-season the team hired Sid Gillman, the revolutionary passing guru and former head coach of the San Diego Chargers, to liven things up as Chicago’s offensive coordinator. No longer, it seemed, would the Bears run 80 percent of the time, or only line up two receivers and a tight end. Gillman promised four-wideout sets and Payton going deep along the sideline; wild slants and imaginative bombs. “He had a brilliant mind,” said receiver Brian Baschnagel. “The football field was Sid’s playground.”
Though the Bears opened the season by losing two of their first three games, Pardee projected little panic. Payton had run well, but the overall adjustment to Gillman’s ideas was awkward. “It takes time,” Pardee said. “We’ll get it right.” On October 10, the 2-1 Los Angeles Rams came to Chicago. Playing quarterback was Joe Namath, now thirty-four years old and in his first season out of New York. The Rams had naïvely signed Broadway Joe as a free agent, hoping he could replicate the magic of his earlier days with the Jets. Namath, though, was a Xerox of his old self; painfully immobile and standing on a pair of knees held together by chewing gum and Scotch Tape. In planning for the game, Pardee and Brad Ecklund, Chicago’s defensive line coach, drew up a strategy centered upon turning Namath into a piñata. The Bears were to hit Namath hard, often, and if need be, late.
In a game noteworthy for its sheer brutality, Chicago assaulted Namath, who—on those rare occasions he was able to cleanly get rid of the ball—watched his passes flutter pathetically into a driving rain and fierce wind. In the fourth quarter Waymond Bryant, the Chicago linebacker, was ejected after he knocked Namath out with an illegal tackle, thrusting the top of his helmet into Namath’s Adam’s apple. “The hit by Bryant was a cheap shot,” said Dennis Harrah, the Rams’ guard. “I didn’t see it very well. But I knew it. I could feel it.”
Having played in the SWAC, where coaches fought coaches and bounties were placed upon the heads of superstars, Payton was generally unflustered by the nastiness of professional football. Oftentimes, in fact, he embraced it. Early in the first quarter, while running a sweep, Payton was yanked out of bounds by Bill Simpson, a Rams defensive back who grabbed hold of his face mask and refused to let go. Payton, being Payton, popped up, said nothing, and jogged back to the huddle. Later on, following a third-quarter sweep by Roland Harper, Payton approached Simpson from behind and clipped him in the left knee with his shoulder pad. The hit was dirty, though Payton’s intent was merely to send a message, not actually hurt someone. “Walter,” Simpson said, “what the hell are you doing?”
Payton shrugged off the question—what comes around goes around. But then the screaming began. And the threats. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, Payton! You’re a motherfucking dead man! Watch your back, motherfucker! Watch your back!”
The words emerged from the lips of one Isiah Robertson, Los Angeles’ twenty-eight-year-old right outside linebacker. A 1971 first-round draft pick out of the SWAC’s Southern University, Robertson wasted little time establishing himself as one of the league’s best players, earning All-Pro honors as a rookie and being named the NFC Rookie of the Year. He was fast and ferocious, yet as the seasons passed, coaches and teammates began to question his stability. “Isiah was a very good player, but he was a pain in the ass,” said Bob Pifferini, a Rams linebacker. “I can’t think of too many nice things to say about him—he was so selfish, it was painful. He was our teammate, but if he and Walter came to blows, 99