Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [136]
It started with the athletic tape. Walter Payton would grab a roll and look it over. Once. Twice. Three times. There couldn’t be any blemishes on the white surface. Not even a speck.
When the tape met his approval, Payton lifted his right cleat onto a stool, bending his knee ever so slightly. Using both hands, he pulled the tape as taut as possible, then began the slow, meticulous act of wrapping it around and around the footwear. Once the first shoe was done, he focused on the second.
The process, known throughout football as “spatting,” was generally practiced by team trainers and equipment managers as a method of keeping shoes straight and in tip-top form. Yet Payton was particular. He also happened to be, hands down, the NFL’s best spatter. “We were together at the 1978 Pro Bowl, and Walter was my personal spatter,” said Ahmad Rashad, the Vikings receiver. “He could spat a shoe and there wouldn’t even be a wrinkle. Not a single one. The great spatters are incredibly valued. Some trainers can do it, some can’t. It’s a thing of pride. Walter could do it on your shoe and it’d be just stellar.”
Payton’s devotion to the perfect spat reflected his devotion to brilliance. The reason he had trouble with, first, Jack Pardee and now, Neill Armstrong, wasn’t because they were bad men or even particularly bad coaches. It was because neither one seemed to chase perfection. They desired to win, sure, but Payton rarely sensed any genuine life-or-death desperation from the organization. The Bears were as content prevailing 10–7 as they were 45–3. They took few on-field chances and even fewer off-the-field personnel risks. With the sixty-sixth pick of the third round of the 1979 NFL Draft, Finks tuned out the pleas of his scouts by ignoring a Notre Dame quarterback named Joe Montana in favor of running back Willie McClendon of Georgia. “Chicago’s personnel guys will swear to you they went to work that day convinced the team would draft Montana,” said Don Pierson. “Finks just didn’t want to pull the trigger on that one. He believed in Bob Avellini, Vince Evans, and Mike Phipps.” Other NFC teams—the Cowboys and Vikings in particular—went for the jugular. The Bears did not.
As far as wins and losses go, 1979 was a banner year for the Bears, who went 10-6 and reached the play-offs for just the second time in sixteen seasons. Yet Payton, by now in his fifth year, wasn’t blinded by the mirage of a soft schedule and some lucky bounces (the Bears beat two two-win clubs, needed a desperation last-second play to overcome San Francisco, and defeated a Jets team lacking its star, wide receiver Wesley Walker). In what many considered to be the best sustained showing of his career, Payton rushed for 1,610 yards and fourteen touchdowns, and caught another thirty-one passes for 313 yards and two touchdowns. “Even that great year he had [1977],” linebacker Doug Buffone raved, “I don’t think he was running like this.”
With Harper, his invaluable fullback, out for the entire season with a knee injury, Payton was still unstoppable. He opened the year with 125 yards in a loss to Green Bay, and tore up the usually impenetrable Vikings for 182 yards a week later. He killed the Cowboys for 134 yards and, in a must-win regular season finale against the Cardinals, cruised for 157 yards and three touchdowns (Chicago dominated, 42–6, and Payton clinched his fourth-straight NFC rushing title).
Even with those magnificent showings, however, the Bears remained a bubble team that could not reach the next level. Now in his sixth year as the general manager, Finks still refused to draft or trade for a top-flight quarterback, believing he could always find some passable schlub for the position. When the Raiders offered Ken Stabler before the October 9 trading deadline, Finks barely picked up the phone. “We told [the Raiders] that we weren’t interested,” Finks said. “We felt like our quarterback situation was OK.”
Payton was incredulous. OK? OK? Stabler was a four-time Pro Bowler who led the Raiders to victory in Super Bowl XI. The Bears, meanwhile,