Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [160]
The Bears opened at home against Tampa Bay, and while the city was euphoric over an easy 34–14 triumph, Payton, who ran for sixty-one yards on sixteen carries, was back to brooding. In order to protect the thirty-year-old’s knees, Ditka removed him when the Bears jumped out to a 27–7 lead early in the fourth quarter. It was a decision any head coach would have made, and no one on the Bears—even the backstabbing Ryan—found it objectionable.
As he walked toward the locker room afterward, Payton sulked, refusing to acknowledge the fans who called his name. Payton then blew off the media, speaking only to the hosts of the postgame TV show that paid him to appear.
A couple of days later, Payton attempted to explain his behavior, saying he was upset over not “playing my type of game.” Ditka was incredulous. So were several teammates. “It was supposed to be all about winning,” said Bob Avellini, the Bears’ backup quarterback. “But sometimes it wasn’t.”
The poor mood didn’t last. Payton ran for 179 yards in a Week 2 rout of Denver, during which he surpassed Brown’s NFL record of 15,459 all-purpose yards. The following week he gained another 110 in a tight 9–7 triumph at Green Bay. (Afterward, some Packers were incensed over Chicago’s dirty play. Said guard Greg Koch: “They’re a bullshit team and a bullshit organization.”)
“Walter was as good at that time as he’d been when he was younger,” said Lynn Dickey, the Packers quarterback. “We made it our goal as a team to bust him up and destroy him with hard hits. But Walter just demoralized us. We couldn’t stop him.”
When Payton looked over the schedule before the start of the season, a September 23 trek to Seattle hardly jumped off the page. In the chase to overtake Brown, however, much had changed since the preseason. In a nod to the business-before-loyalty approach of the NFL, the Steelers had cut loose Harris in late August when he refused to agree to contract terms. The decision was a shocking one, considering Harris’ proximity to the record, and the publicity-starved Seahawks eagerly picked him up.
As a result, a normally ho-hum matchup held genuine intrigue. Harris led Payton by thirty-four yards, and the Seahawks arranged a joint press conference for both men on the Saturday before the game. Payton, perhaps sensing Harris was on his last leg, arrived giddy, talkative, and gracious. He confessed the record meant a great deal, then used part of the session to lobby for a law in Illinois to require motorcyclists to wear helmets, noting that someone he knew had recently died.
Harris didn’t show for the event.
Or, really, for the game.
Seattle won 38–9, but it was the duel-that-wasn’t that generated the buzz. With 2:05 remaining in the first quarter, Payton took a pitch and scooted nine yards around right end. The run was unexceptional, but with it Payton trailed one less man. He outgained Harris for the game, 116 yards to 23 yards, and it became clear to most everyone that Seattle’s veteran halfback was a dead man running.
Not that Harris agreed. “As far as I’m concerned, the race is on,” he said. “It’s up to me to see if I can make it a race. I think I can.”
He couldn’t.
The Seahawks released Harris six weeks later.
In the days following the Seattle defeat, all Payton could think about was Jim Brown. Save for their joint appearance on Donahue, the two legends had never spent any time together. In fact, Payton never even viewed footage of Brown running the ball until a week after Seattle, when he found himself watching a TV highlight film of the NFL’s greatest running backs. “Jim Brown was big and strong and quick,” Payton said afterward. “And he even made a one-handed catch. Hey, that’s what football is all about.”
The men were polar opposites. Although Brown was raised by a great-grandmother in an all-black community on St. Simons Island, Georgia, for the first eight years of his life, the remainder of his childhood