Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [193]
The Bears were so good in every way tonight that the almost incidental contributions of Walter Payton, 33, went almost unnoticed. The leading rusher in the history of the league, he looked every bit his age . . . [giving way to] Neal Anderson, whose all-around excellence suggests there is a new offensive hero in Chicago.
For Payton, the win provided predictably little solace. Neither did the following week’s triumph, when Chicago slaughtered Tampa Bay, 20–3.
Though Payton scored two touchdowns (including his NFL-record 107th on a one-yard dive), he ran for a paltry twenty-four yards on fifteen carries and was pulled from the field on third downs. To make up for the lack of a genuine fullback, the Bears called an increased number of weak-side trap runs, where the tight end led. It wasn’t to Payton’s liking. Anderson, meanwhile, enjoyed the first hundred-yard game of his career, gaining 115 yards on sixteen carries. “They’re keying on Walter,” Ditka explained afterward with zero credibility. When the assembled media members tried speaking with Payton, he brushed past without saying a word or acknowledging congratulatory wishes for his tenth NFL record. “He was angry,” a Bears spokesman said, “because he didn’t think the press treated him well this week.”
“You can tell he’s upset,” said Johnny Roland, the running backs coach. “Yeah, he’s upset, because he’s not being used to the best of his abilities. Walter is still a good player.”
On the opening night of the 1986–87 NBA season, Julius Erving, the iconic Philadelphia 76er and a casual acquaintance of Payton’s, announced that he would be retiring at the completion of his sixteenth year. He did so because, at age thirty-six, he recognized he was no longer capable of reaching a certain threshold, but wanted to give fans a chance to bid farewell. “Like the way John Havlicek did it,” Erving said of the Boston Celtics star who retired in 1978. “He played a significant role his last season, even though he was not the star of the team. It was a good time to turn it over to other hands.” Erving’s final go-around was a thing of beauty—he received gifts and standing ovations at opposing arenas, and Philadelphia’s normally acid-tongued fans gushed over his class. He never groused about playing time, or if Coach Matt Guokas called for Charles Barkley or David Wingate to take the final shot.
“I look at Walter’s situation and I feel if anyone in football could do that, it’s Walter,” Erving said. “The whole season becomes a farewell tour and people appreciate seeing him for the last time instead of looking at what he’s not doing on the field.”
If Erving’s final stand was an example of the perfect way to bow out, Payton’s was an unmitigated disaster. On the day after the Tampa game, the NFL Players Association went on strike, demanding genuine free agency (where players would actually be free to switch teams once their contracts expired), improved pensions, and guaranteed contracts (at the time, only 4 percent of NFL contracts were guaranteed). For twenty-four days, Payton and his teammates stayed home as Gene Upshaw, executive director of the players association, accomplished, in Suhey’s words, “nothing I can remember.” Meanwhile, three games were played with replacements, as the Bears of Walter Payton, Reggie Phillips, and Mike Singletary morphed into the Bears of Sean Payton,20 Eddie Phillips, and Mike Hohensee.
Many of the Bears mocked and ridiculed the replacements, but Payton wasn’t one of them. Though he didn’t cross the picket line, he refused to criticize those established veterans who did, or the so-called “scabs”—mostly unemployed nobodies living out a dream. Truth was, he stood