Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [182]
As a Chicago captain, Payton was in charge of calling the coin toss. He walked out to midfield alongside Jimbo Covert, Shaun Gayle, Gary Fencik, and Mike Singletary and watched Bart Starr—one of seventeen former Super Bowl MVPs being honored—flip a silver dollar into the air.
Payton mumbled something, and as the coin landed tails he said, loudly, “Tails, I called!”
“You called heads,” said Red Cashion, the referee.
“No,” said Fencik. “He said tails.”
The Patriots players began complaining. “Toss it again,” said Steve Grogan, New England’s backup quarterback.
Cashion laughed nervously. “He called tails,” he said. “He is the winner, and it’s [the Bears’] choice.”
Chicago opted to receive, and Gault returned the opening kickoff eleven yards to the Chicago eighteen-yard line. On the game’s first offensive play, McMahon tossed a pitch to Payton—“Who else!” said Dick Enberg, NBC’s play-by-play announcer—who swerved left and gained seven yards. He popped up and trotted back to the huddle. The next call was another handoff, this time straight into the teeth of New England’s defensive line. McMahon accepted the snap and gave the ball to a fast-approaching Payton, who took a step to his left and was immediately drilled by Garin Veris, the Patriots’ six-foot-four, 255-pound defensive end. Veris’ helmet dislodged the ball and Larry McGrew, a speedy linebacker, dove atop the loose object at the nineteen-yard line. New England was in business.
Payton, who fumbled six times during the regular season, had waited much of his life to play in a Super Bowl. He spent the night before the game tossing and turning in bed. TV on, TV off. Get up, get down. Light on, light off. A practitioner of positive visualization, he imagined himself slicing through New England’s defense en route to 150 yards, three touchdowns, and the game’s MVP trophy.
Instead, he fumbled.
Payton retreated to the sideline and spoke briefly with Matt Suhey, who implored him to shake off the blunder. Payton, however, was devastated. For two weeks, Chicago’s defense barked loudly about pitching the first shutout in Super Bowl history. Now, as Tony Franklin’s thirty-six-yard field goal soared through the uprights, the dream was dead.19
“My fondest memory of that game is the Patriots taking a 3–0 lead,” said Gary Christenson, the Bears’ ticket manager. “I was sitting next to the Patriots’ ticket manager, and he had a grin from ear to ear. I thought to myself, ‘Just wait, buddy. Just you wait.’ ”
For the remainder of the game, Payton was a nonfactor. The man who overcame prejudice and small-school bias and injury and shoddy offensive lines couldn’t get the fumble out of his head. The mishap plagued him. Haunted him. He moped along the sideline, and though he was handed the ball twenty-two times, he ran for a meager sixty-one yards while failing to catch a single pass. Afterward, Chicago’s players and coaches rationalized his poor performance by insisting New England obsessed over him, and that Payton’s mere presence allowed McMahon to throw for 256 yards and run for two touchdowns. “The Patriots,” said Gault, “were dead-set on holding Walter down.”
Even with a cardboard Red Grange cutout starting in Payton’s place, nothing could have stopped the Bears. Chicago was too fast, too strong, too intimidating. The Bears led 23–3 at halftime, then scored twenty-one unanswered points in the third quarter. By the time the game ended, the 46–10 victory stood as the greatest rout in Super Bowl history.
As the final minutes ticked away, Chicago players and coaches walked up and down the sidelines, hugging, laughing, embracing. This was the end result of a glorious season, and the Bears were committed to enjoying it. Mike Singletary hugged Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall. McMahon and Gault,