Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [189]
Unfortunately for the Bears, Flutie Fever failed to last. Ditka made the mistake of inviting his new quarterback to his house for Thanksgiving dinner, and the McMahon-led peanut gallery teed off. “It was Jim’s insecurity, and it was wrong,” Hilgenberg said. “Doug was a super guy, and he was exciting to have out there. He was the right guy to have starting. But we hurt ourselves by making it so hard on him.”
On January 3, 1987, the Bears hosted the Redskins in a divisional play-off game at Soldier Field. With a league-best 14-2 record, Chicago remained the oddsmaker’s favorites to return to the Super Bowl. It was not to be. Flutie completed only eleven of thirty-one passes and threw two interceptions. The Washington defense ganged up on Payton, holding him to thirty-eight yards on fourteen carries. With the Redskins leading 14–13 midway through the third quarter, the Bears pieced together a drive. Dennis Gentry returned the kickoff forty-eight yards to Washington’s forty-two. Anderson swept eleven yards, then Calvin Thomas drove up the middle for thirteen more yards to the eighteen. “We were really coming off the ball there,” said Covert.
On the ensuing play Payton was hit by Washington’s Darryl Grant. He fumbled, and the Redskins recovered. Drive dead. Momentum gone. The Bears lost 27–13.
“I don’t know what happened,” Payton said. “You don’t have to ask if I’m disappointed.”
Afterward, a drained Payton sat by his locker and contemplated football mortality. He was thirty-three years old, and battered worse than ever. Every muscle hurt. Every joint ached. In the moments before the game, Caito, the team’s trainer, had inserted a large needle beneath the nail on Payton’s right big toe—yet another temporary remedy for the turf toe that ached with each step. Payton’s forehead beaded with sweat. His hands shook. “He would grab my arm as the needle went into his skin,” said Shaun Gayle, a defensive back. “The pain must have been excruciating.” Though also burdened by a dislocated toe on the other foot that radiated anguish, Payton never used the maladies as excuses. “Instead of appearing like the old Walter Payton,” Gary Pomerantz wrote in The Washington Post, “he just appeared old.” The loss to Washington marked the seventh straight game in which he failed to crack a hundred yards. The fumble was his sixth in seven games. Across the league, word was out that Payton had lost much of what had made him extraordinary.
“My goal is sixteen hundred [yards] for next year,” he said defiantly. “If Neal wants my job, if Thomas Sanders wants my job, if Matt [Suhey] wants my job, they’ll have to be so good they’re going to lead the league in everything and be the most valuable player because I’m going to work my butt off to attain that.”
Little did Payton know, the Chicago Bears had a decidedly different plan.
“There is no loyalty in sports,” the man said. He was sitting at a bar, robotically downing one cup of coffee after another. “No loyalty. None. Zero.”
Mike Ditka was on a roll. Twenty-three years had passed since Walter Payton prepared for his final season as a Chicago Bear, and the coach was still livid. “You’re a commodity,” he said. “You’re paid, and when you can’t produce, you’re gone. There’s no loyalty. And as the coach, I’m the one in the middle—if you’re loyal, you’re stuck. Because then you have to defend the reason you’re loyal. And I mean, it’s just the way it is. There’s no loyalty.”
Though time supposedly heals all wounds, it hasn’t touched this one. Entering the 1987 season, Ditka—who took few marching orders—was given very specific ones by Michael McCaskey, the Bears’ president: If you want to continue to coach this team, you’ll phase out Walter Payton and phase in Neal Anderson.
Though often lampooned as one, Ditka is hardly a fool. He certainly recognized the signs of a fading star, and Payton was showing all sorts of them. Why, in the February 1 Pro Bowl in Honolulu,