Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [117]
The one Bear who seemed most irked by Payton was Avellini, the prickly quarterback who resented the excessive praise accrued by his teammate. Avellini, according to one of his offensive linemen, “thought he was better than everyone else. I don’t know what he did in college at Maryland, but he thought he was God’s gift to quarterbacking. The linemen—all of us—hated him.” During a luncheon appearance at Chicago’s Playboy Club, Avellini answered a guest’s question by insisting he would throw more to Payton as soon as the halfback started running proper pass patterns. At practice the following day, Avellini spotted Joe Lapointe, the Chicago Sun-Times writer who used the quote. Avellini launched a pass that nearly slammed into the scribe’s head. Walking by, an amused Payton picked up the ball, flipped it to Lapointe, and in his high-pitched cackle, said, “Here, fight back.”
“Maybe Walter was annoying at times,” said Doug Plank, the longtime safety. “But you had to love his spirit.”
The kid whose effort and heart were once questioned by Pardee and Finks was suddenly the toughest Bear of them all. Less than twenty-four hours after his historic showing against the Vikings, Payton could be found at the team’s Lake Forest practice facility, jogging back and forth through the chilling winds alongside his teammates. “He was running scout plays to get us ready for Detroit,” said Pardee. “He has his head on straight.”
With success and fame, Payton noticed teammates beginning to look his way for leadership. While he was hardly one to give a rousing pep talk, his dedication spoke volumes. Payton was usually the first on the field for practice and the last to leave the facility come day’s end. He finished off every run with a forty-yard sprint, and could often be found in a dark corner, completing hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups.
Whereas others walked through the locker room in either sneakers or sandals, Payton wore shoes without heels or insoles. At practice. At home. On a trip to the movies. Driving his van. “He thought it built up leg strength,” said Plank. “And if Walter thought something could help him, he’d be 100 percent dedicated to the idea. He was always pushing himself and challenging himself to get better. And if you see Walter Payton, a man gifted with so much talent, pushing himself, you want to push yourself, too.”
Though the offensive linemen didn’t always get along with one another, they came to love Payton. He offered regular credit and encouragement, and following the 1976 season bought each one a gold watch with the inscription THANKS FOR 1,000 YARDS. WALTER PAYTON.
Blocking for Payton was, in the words of Peiffer, “ joyous . . . easy.”
“Give him half a hole and he would hit it and be gone,” Peiffer said. “If you did anything at all to block your guy, Walter was going to hit the hole and be past the line of scrimmage.”
When he was scheduled to appear on national television, Payton showed up with his entire line in tow. “Talk to them,” he told prospective interviewers. “They make me.” While the sentiment was hogwash (if anyone was being “made,” it was his mediocre linemen), it was from the heart. Late in the season, he was especially gleeful when Phyllis George, one of the cohosts of CBS’s NFL Today, came to Lake Forest, ignored Payton, and focused an entire segment on his linemen.
“You need a nickname,” George told the men.
“I think we’ll be the Beehive,” Sorey laughed, “because we protect the Sweetness.”
The red-hot Bears traveled to Detroit to face the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, and Payton was held to twenty yards on seven carries in the first half. At the start of the third quarter, the words WALTER WHO? flashed across the Silverdome scoreboard. Payton’s first handoff of the second half was a forty-three-yard burst around right end. By the time the game had ended, Payton’s statistical line read 137 yards on twenty rushes (he also caught four balls for 107 yards), and Chicago won, 31–14. The Bears were now 6-5 and in the thick of the play-off race.
With three games left, Payton’s 1,541 rushing yards