Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [188]
Along with defensive coordinator, the other spot that damned the ’86 Bears was quarterback. McMahon started four of Chicago’s first six games, but his body was halfway to the morgue. He could barely move his right shoulder. “My arm was coming out of the socket,” he said. “It was from an injury I first had in high school. I kept telling the doctor what was wrong. He said, ‘That can’t be happening. Do you know how painful that is?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know. Happens every day.’ ” McMahon sat out the seventh game, which the Steve Fuller–led Bears lost at Minnesota, 23–7. At a team meeting the next day, Dan Hampton, the veteran defensive lineman, lit into McMahon. “I liked Jim and I still like Jim,” Hampton said. “I think the combination of a lackadaisical approach to the game, the lackadaisical approach to being ready as a team, all those little things contributed.”
With McMahon sidelined and team unity cracking apart, Chicago made a personnel decision that, in hindsight, crushed hopes of a repeat. Despite having a pair of backups on the roster (Fuller and Mike Tomczak), the Bears sent two draft picks to the Rams for the rights to Doug Flutie, the 1984 Heisman Trophy winner at Boston College. A five-foot-ten, 180-pound piano stool of a quarterback, Flutie had recently completed his rookie season with the New Jersey Generals of the now-defunct USFL. Immortalized for his last-second Hail Mary to upset the University of Miami as a senior, Flutie was a near-iconic sports figure.
Bears players decided they had no use for him.
Chicago was McMahon’s team. And McMahon was a schoolyard bully. On the day after the trade, he showed up at practice sporting a red No. 22 jersey, the same one Flutie had worn in college and with the Generals. McMahon derisively referred to Flutie as “America’s midget,” and later mocked him while appearing on The Tonight Show. Teammates enthusiastically joined in.
“I was shocked we even considered taking him,” Otis Wilson told the Tribune. “Nobody else picked him up, so why would we? Flutie has one play—that Hail Mary.”
Asked how much he thought Flutie was worth to the Bears, Wilson shrugged. “How much change I got in my pocket?” he asked.
When Flutie entered the locker room for the first time, he felt the Lake Michigan chill. McMahon ignored him, as did most of the other players. “I was unwanted,” he said, “and I knew it.” Then Flutie was spotted by Payton. With the entire team watching, he walked up to the new quarterback, extended his hand, and said, “I’m Walter Payton—glad to have you here!” He directed Flutie to the entrance of the locker room, where a crude sign, made from copy paper and Magic Marker, hung from the door. NO PLAYERS UNDER 5’8” ALLOWED, it read. Payton grinned sheepishly. The handwriting was his.
“He ignored the whole McMahon thing and acted as a buffer for me,” said Flutie. “There were only a handful of guys who went out of their way to make me feel comfortable, and Walter was one of them. He was such a wonderful man.”
Seven weeks into his tenure with the Bears, Flutie finally made an impact. He replaced Tomczak in the second quarter of a game against Tampa Bay, hit Willie Gault for a fifty-two-yard gain on his first completion, and connected with Payton for a twenty-seven-yard touchdown on his second. After exchanging hugs with jovial teammates, Payton took the ball and handed it to a fan. Later, when he was reminded that it had been Flutie’s first NFL touchdown pass, Payton used the postgame press conference