Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [115]
The Bears began the game with the ball on their own twenty-six. On first down and ten, O’Connor signaled a play called Ride 38 Bob Odd 0—both guards, along with the tight end, pull, leading Payton around the corner. “My guy to block was Paul Krause, their safety,” said Earl, the fullback. “We had a moat alongside the field, and I drove Paul so hard that I got under his pads and dumped him into the moat. I looked down at him and said, ‘All day, Paul. All day.’ ” Payton gained twenty-nine yards, and the fans cheered in delight.
Avellini was Chicago’s quarterback in name only. He waited for O’Connor to call a pass play, but to little avail. His line for the day: four completions, six attempts, thirty-three yards. “If your running back is gaining ten yards a clip,” said Pardee, “why would you ever throw the football? We wanted to run to the left side of their defense, and the Vikings kept lining up perfectly. So we ran it down their throats.”
By the time the first quarter was over, Payton had carried thirteen times for seventy-seven yards. He broke a hundred yards on his twenty-second carry, and by halftime was up to 144 yards on twenty-six attempts. As was the case against the Chiefs, Chicago’s blockers—largely inspired by Payton’s determination—were beating up the overwhelmed Vikings. (“We’re the only line you’ll see running forty yards downfield, looking for someone else to block,” a giddy Sorey said afterward.) Yet the story was Payton. Though often credited for brute strength and a hawk’s sense of vision, Payton’s greatest gift might have been his balance. As other running backs spent their off-seasons lifting weights and sprinting down a rubberized track, much of Payton’s time was devoted to either running through the muddy banks of the Pearl River or finding the sandiest dunes and clawing up their slopes. As far as he was concerned, the man who could bolt through mud and muck and sand without falling was the man who could take a hit and keep going. “His balance was unmatched,” said Brent McClanahan, a Vikings running back. “There were so many times I would have fallen down if I were him. But he bounced off people like a rubber ball.”
“I remember watching Walter from the sideline,” said Bryant, the benched Viking cornerback. “All I could think was one thing—‘I sure am glad I’m not out there.’ ”
Despite the awe-inspiring performance, Chicago was struggling to break through. Payton’s one-yard touchdown run in the second quarter gave his team a 7–0 lead, and a thirty-seven-yard field goal from Bob Thomas with forty-three seconds remaining in the half made it 10–0. Having been reduced to a well-paid spectator, Gillman could be seen pacing the sideline, cursing audibly and casting dirty looks toward Pardee. Of all the events he had witnessed through his forty-six years in collegiate and professional football, nothing infuriated Gillman more than the day Payton tore up the Vikings. Where, he wondered, were the passes? The play-action fakes? The draw plays? The varied formations? “Someone told me Sid wanted to quit after that game, because any plays he called were changed to handoffs to Walter,” said Terry Schmidt, a Bears cornerback. “Jack was old school, so we were old school. But it’s a fair question—how does a guy run for that many yards and his team doesn’t win big?”
At the end of the third quarter, the Bears led 10–7, and Payton was up to 192 yards on thirty-four carries. One year earlier O. J. Simpson had set the single-game rushing record with 273 yards against Detroit. Payton knew he was having one hell of a game, but there was no mention of Simpson’s mark along Chicago’s sideline. “It never came up,” he said afterward. “I don’t like people telling me stuff like that when the game’s on the line.”
With five minutes remaining, Payton needed sixty-three yards