Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [172]
Despite reservations, on the morning of November 23, Payton shuffled into a suburban Chicago recording studio, alongside Gault, Perry, McMahon, Singletary, and a handful of others. He didn’t want to be there, but didn’t want to be left out, either. How could the Chicago Bears do a song and not include Sweetness? How could Sweetness let others take all the glory?
Because he was the greatest of Bears, as well as a future Hall of Famer, Payton was selected to rap the tune’s opening lyrics. The words were written by Dick Meyer, a slimy aspiring record producer who initially approached Gault with the “Shuffle” idea, and they were inane.
Well, they call me Sweetness,
And I like to dance . . .
Ever the 24 Karat Black Gold star, Payton pulled it off without a hitch. “Walter was the best of the bunch, by far,” said Darryl Krall, technical director of the “Shuffle” video. “He had that high Michael Jackson falsetto, and his sense of rhythm was perfect.”
One day later the Bears destroyed the Falcons, 36–0, running their record to 12-0 and upping the team’s confidence to an all-time high. Over the past three games, Chicago had outscored the opposition 104–3. With 102 yards, Payton was now leading the NFC and in pursuit of his second NFL rushing crown. “This team has not reached its peak,” he said afterward. “We’re capable of scoring sixty points. We don’t know how good we are, and that’s kind of scary.”
“We aren’t satisfied yet,” added Singletary. “If you set your goals as being the best team of all time, the best players of all time, how can you be satisfied? People are waiting, expecting, for us to hit that slump. Will it be the Dallas game? No, maybe it will be the week after Dallas and the week before Miami. No, maybe it will be Miami.
“People are saying we’ve got to have that one day, that one game. But why? Why do we have to? If you keep trying to improve, every week, why does there have to be that one week? When will it happen? Maybe it won’t happen.”
On the day after the Atlanta triumph, a group of ten Bears posed for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” jacket cover. For roughly two hours, the men—clad in clean blue jerseys and white pants—stood inside a room, making wacky and tough and serious and goofy faces for a photographer named Paul Natkin and embracing the magic of a 12-0 roll. Payton, again, didn’t feel right about the whole thing. The next game was a Monday night trip to Miami, where the 8-4 Dolphins awaited. Spearheaded by a twenty-four-year-old quarterback named Dan Marino and his two young, fleet wide receivers, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper (aka the Marks Brothers), Miami featured a group of offensive players who believed they could score on anyone in the league—Chicago included. “We are going to kick the Bears’ butts,” Duper said that week. “The Bears are in for the treat of their lives.”
For Miami, there was added motivation in facing a team with an unblemished record. In NFL history, only one franchise, the 1972 Dolphins, had gone undefeated. Those Dolphins were coached by Don Shula, as were these Dolphins. There was a connection and a need to win. Throughout the week, members of that ’72 group, including legendary figures like Nick Buoniconti, Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, and Bob Kuechenberg, attended practices, pressuring the modern Dolphins to find a way.
The Bears, on the other hand, were surprisingly casual. When the chartered plane left Chicago, it had been fifteen degrees and snowy. When it set down in Miami, the temperature was seventy-five degrees, with a cloudless sky. The siren call of South Beach beckoned. “We didn’t care about that game,” said Butler, the rookie kicker. “We weren’t trying to go undefeated—we were trying