Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [96]
“We realized we had to bite the bullet and rebuild the franchise one player at a time,” said Pardee. “If you played for me in the past and you had some talent, I was giving you a look. Just take a number and line on up.”
With the Lake Michigan winds becoming increasingly fierce and the losses piling up like mounds of icy snow, life with the team turned unbearable. The Bears traveled to Bloomington, Minnesota, and were pasted by the Vikings, 28–3 (Payton’s postgame quote—“They weren’t as good as I expected”—was greeted with dumbfounded silence by teammates), then visited Pontiac, Michigan, for what many of the players hoped could be a win over the mediocre Lions.
Instead, Detroit handed Chicago one of the most humiliating losses in the history of the franchise. Though the scoreboard read 27–7, Lion players mocked their rivals throughout. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen an opponent laugh at the other team,” Pardee said afterward. “That’s what they were doing out there. Laughing at us. We looked like a bunch of little boys playing grown men.”
Payton accrued no yards for the second time in four weeks, and left midway through the game with a calf bruise. In the following morning’s press conference, Pardee protected the rookie (“He played a good game. He blocked well.”) and ripped the offensive line as a dysfunctional band of dolts. Unlike earlier in the season, however, when hope still existed and the mood remained upbeat, now fewer veterans were willing to hear such drivel. Payton and his little shoelace bells had been cute during camp, and talk of his inevitable greatness could be chalked up to giddy optimism. But now, when the games mattered, the kid wasn’t performing. Did Franco Harris ever have the offensive line as a scapegoat in Pittsburgh? Did O. J. Simpson in Buffalo? Lydell Mitchell with the Colts? No, no, and no. So why wasn’t Payton taking some of the blame and admitting he missed a lot of open holes?
Truth is, while Payton was liked from the beginning, many teammates found him perplexing and, as the season progressed, increasingly irksome. “He had this loud whistle that he’d do for no reason in the locker room,” said Don Rives, a veteran linebacker. “I’d hear that and want to strangle him around the neck. But he was twenty-two. At that age, people are immature and stupid.” Before the game in Detroit, Payton—who steadfastly attended team chapel services on Sunday mornings—asked all of the offensive linemen to join him in the shower of the visiting locker room. Bob Asher, a backup tackle, thought he wanted to review the Lions’ defense. “Walter had us all join hands,” Asher said, “and then he started praying—this really spiritual prayer that made everyone very uncomfortable.”
Those who knew Payton well (his girlfriend, his mother, his brother) urged him to fight back the awkwardness and make a sincere effort to reach out toward teammates. But instead of endearing himself, Payton overcompensated and reverted to the mischievous kid from Columbia. He threw balled-up, damp, dirty practice socks at the heads of unsuspecting teammates (and whipped towels at bare rear ends and flicked ears with his drawn-back index finger). Before arriving for team meetings, he liked to stop