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“Clean out that fucker’s locker,” Ditka told Caito, the equipment manager. “He’s done, too.”

As ordered, Caito once again tossed all of Watts’ possessions into a plastic garbage bag and placed it by a curb. When asked by the assembled media whether Watts’ absence was excused, Ditka audibly snarled. “I don’t know where he is,” the coach said. “Wanna ask me if I care?”

“Do you care?” asked Kevin Lamb of the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Nope,” said Ditka.

He genuinely didn’t.

“Rickey Watts thought he was the greatest thing since sliced cheese,” Ditka said. “And he was, talent-wise. But sometimes the gain of adding talent isn’t worth what you lose. What you lose in the locker room isn’t worth what you gain on the field.”

Jack Childers, Watts’ agent, called his client later that day, urging him to return to camp. Watts did, and Ditka begrudgingly granted him a second chance. “You’re on a short fucking leash,” Ditka said. “Very short.”

Payton couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was as if Bob Hill, his coach at Jackson State, had been reincarnated into a stumpy white man with a Brillo Pad mustache and crooked fingers. Many of the older Bears came to detest Ditka, what with his militaristic ways and crazed snarl. For the coach’s first morning workout, the players were told to dress in full pads. They began with a live, thirty-play eleven-on-eleven scrimmage and ended with ten forty-yard sprints. Noah Jackson, the overweight offensive lineman, turned to fans during a water break, sighed, and moaned, “See what y’all get for saying ‘Good-bye Neill Armstrong?’ ”

Payton, however, loved it. Maybe, at long last, winning was a priority in Chicago.

Or, maybe not.

Because Mike Ditka is a Bears icon, and because his team went on to eventually accomplish great things, people tend to forget that his first season as head coach was an unmitigated disaster.

Chicago kicked off its year with listless defeats to Detroit and New Orleans (Payton ran for forty-six total yards). Then a fifty-seven-day player strike threatened to wipe out the season. The impasse ended, but the bitter feelings did not. Payton, who lost nearly two hundred thousand dollars during the lockout, wondered aloud why the work stoppage even happened. Several Bears were furious over their star’s hesitancy to support the union. “At first they were asking me if I would walk out and I said I’d have to get legal counseling,” he said. “A lot of guys were disappointed with me then, but it was the only thing I could say. Now I look back on the agreement and the eight weeks I was out with them was a total waste for me.”

Though Payton embraced Ditka’s demands of excellence, the resumption of the season (seven more regular-season games would be played) reminded the Bears that, beneath his team-first verbiage, the running back possessed a selfish streak often obscured by statistics and smiles. For the bulk of his career, Payton had Ray Earley, the longtime equipment manager, keep him abreast of his rushing yardage totals during games. Payton would casually stroll past Earley, give him a look and hear, “You’re at seventy-three,” or “Eleven more and you’ve got a hundred.”

“That was kept quiet,” said Jay Hilgenberg, the offensive lineman. “But we knew.”

Had Chicago been winning, perhaps Payton would have ignored any urges to again mope and whine aloud. But with the team limping toward a 3-6 record, he felt compelled to speak out.

“I don’t know how long I can play here,” Payton said. “I like it. I like Chicago. I’ve had no problem with management. I’m just disappointed. I’d rather not say why, but I’m going to call a press conference after the season and tell everything. I know what’s wrong, I know why, but I can’t say. At Jackson State, if we went 7-3 it was like a losing season. It’s kind of hard to get here, where everyone is supposed to be professionals, and end up with the record we’ve got now.12

“I still like playing football. What are you going to write? How’s this? ‘A rose in