• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1633 0

over at New York’s forty-five-yard line. Avellini hit tight end Greg Latta for one yard, then for eighteen yards down the middle of the field. The quarterback called for a time-out with forty-two seconds left and returned to the field facing first and ten at the Giant twenty-five. The few remaining fans stood on their feet and screamed as loud as possible. Avellini dropped back and, with linebacker Brian Kelley charging fast, spotted Payton in the right flat. The running back caught the ball, broke a tackle from free safety Larry Mallory, took off downfield, and was finally wrestled down at the eleven-yard line. The run was beautiful but maddening. It was vintage Payton, but his decision not to run out of bounds and stop the clock baffled Avellini. “It’s such a macho thing, staying in bounds, and it was very poor thinking,” Avellini said. “Now the clock is running. We were so screwed up, so poorly coached, that half the field goal unit was running onto the field while I’m planning on killing the clock with a play. None of this confusion would have happened had Walter run out of bounds.”

With thirty-two seconds left and no time-outs remaining, Payton and the other offensive players jogged back off the field just as Thomas and the field goal unit sprinted to their marks. “Part of the field was covered with snow, another part was covered by cracked ice,” said Thomas. “And beneath the cracked ice was freezing water.” A spindly five-foot-ten, 178-pound Notre Dame grad, the kicker was something of an odd fit among teammates. An avid reader who, twenty-three years later, would become a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court, Thomas was a thinker. At times too much of a thinker.

Now Thomas was deep in his own psyche. This was a big kick. A really big kick. He looked up and spotted Don Rives, the team’s ornery linebacker, barreling his way. “Thomas,” Rives said, placing both hands around the kicker’s neck. “You miss this, I’ll chop your nuts off.”7

Just in case the sentiment didn’t resonate, punter Bob Parsons followed with some wisdom of his own. “[He] grabbed me by the shoulder pads and picked me up and said, ‘If you don’t make the kick, I’ll break your neck,’ ” recalled Thomas. “So I said to him, ‘You obviously weren’t a psychology major at Penn State.’ ” Sitting in the stands, Thomas’ mother, Anne, was too nervous to watch. She ran into the nearest bathroom and hid in a stall.

The snap from center Dan Neal was perfect, as was Avellini’s hold. Thomas kicked the ball straight through the uprights, jumped into the air, and sprinted off the field. Anne was greeted in the bathroom by screams of “We won! We won! We won!” She assumed her son missed—until the reveler was identified as Jack Pardee’s wife, Phyllis.

What if Thomas had shanked another one?

“I saw an exit sign to the left,” he joked afterward. “I would have had them forward my mail to Asia.”

Payton finished with forty-seven yards rushing, his second-lowest output of the season. It mattered not.

Chicago was going to the play-offs.

Upon their return to Chicago at eight thirty Sunday night, the Bears were greeted at O’Hare Airport by more than three thousand fans, many of whom serenaded the players with “Mine eyes have seen the glory/Of the coming of the Bears . . .” A large number of revelers wore Bear jerseys. Others held signs, ranging in message from SUPER BOWL–BOUND BEARS to WALTER, KISS MY CHILD.

The Bears had no chance.

In eight days they would open the play-offs with a visit to Dallas, where the 12-2 Cowboys awaited. No matter how many Chicagoans told the players they could do it and no matter how starved the city was for a postseason victory, most of the Bears were well aware this was an unwinnable game. The Cowboys were the class of the NFL, blessed with an all-world quarterback named Roger Staubach, an all-world wide receiver named Drew Pearson, a wondrous rookie halfback named Tony Dorsett, and a defense featuring two of the game’s elite linemen, Randy White and Ed “Too Tall” Jones. With the exception of Payton and perhaps Wally Chambers on the defensive