Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [196]
When asked for his ideal exit, Payton actually painted a similar scenario. “Three seconds left,” he said. “We’re on the twenty-yard line. We’re down by a touchdown. I run the ball in for a touchdown. We end up winning the game and when I run into the end zone and throw the ball down, I just fly off.”
If only.
On the morning of the biggest game of his life, Tommy Barnhardt woke up at the Conrad Hilton, took the elevator to the lobby, and joined his teammates for breakfast. In a couple of hours Chicago would host the Washington Redskins in a divisional play-off game at Soldier Field. Barnhardt, a rookie punter from the gumball-sized town of Salisbury, North Carolina, was terrified. “I glanced out the window and it was like thirty-five degrees below zero,” he said. “I’d never punted in cold like that. I didn’t know how.” Brarnhardt loaded his plate with eggs and found a spot at a table occupied by Wagner, who was injured, and Payton. “So I go to get some ketchup, and when I come back to sprinkle salt on my eggs, the top of the salt container falls off and my eggs are covered with salt. I grabbed some pepper, and the same thing happens—pours everywhere. Walter starts cracking up, because he did it. Here’s this huge game, and someone’s fucking with me. I was annoyed, but it was Walter Payton. What could I say?”
Moments later, Payton joined Barnhardt in the elevator. The kid wore his stress like a suntan. “Look,” Payton said, “I know you’re nervous, but it’s just wind. Kick it high and hard, and the wind will take it a mile. We have good enough people here to pick up the slack.”
Barnhardt nodded appreciatively. “Walter really loosened me up,” he said. “He saw how scared I was, and he wanted to help. It was genuinely decent of him.”
Though the Bears had finished 11-4, Washington was the thinking man’s pick to pull off the win. Chicago spent the week leading up to the game practicing on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. It was a huge mistake. In South Bend, Indiana, the bars are plentiful. The beer taps flow like Iguazu Falls. “We were in a college town and we partied hard the entire time,” said Hilgenberg. “By the time Sunday came we were exhausted.”
Though Chicago’s defense ranked fourth overall in the league, it scared no one. “We haven’t played [the 46 Defense] since the second game of the season,” said Marshall, the veteran linebacker. “We have a new coaching staff. The attitude here was, ‘Hey, we can trash that forty-six. We can win without that.’ ” Nobody feared coming to Chicago, or worried about Payton—expected to be the primary ball carrier with Anderson out with a knee injury—slicing up their linebackers. When, on his weekly radio show, Ditka predicted his team would reach the Super Bowl (“I think we’ll win it all,” he said. “Because we expect to win. We don’t expect to lose to anybody.”), the words were met with a collective yawn.
Payton prepared for the game by dodging most interview requests, knowing too well the first question would concern either his career-low 533 rushing yards or his fumble against Washington in the previous year’s play-off loss. When he did talk, it was softly, with a jarring level of defeatism. “Sometimes I feel I’m the problem here,” he said. “A lot of times, I don’t even feel I belong here. These are feelings I never felt before. It’s hard. A lot of times, I feel Matt [Suhey], Thomas [Sanders], and Calvin [Thomas] want to play more, and if I wasn’t here, it seems everybody’s wish would be granted. Sometimes I wish this year would hurry up and end, so these guys would get what they wanted.”
Payton started the game alongside Suhey, with McMahon back at quarterback. All seemed right in the world, especially when Chicago jumped out to a 14–0 lead. Energized by a capacity crowd of 58,153, Payton, age thirty-four, looked like Payton, age twenty-four. He ran for seventy-four first-half yards—fifteen on his first carry, seven on