Sweetness (34 page)

Long before it all, O. J. Simpson was a football player. A fabulous, gamechanging football player.

Heading into the 1976 season, there was Simpson, Buffalo’s eighth-year halfback, and there was everyone else. The Juice had led the league with 1,817 rushing yards in 1975—his third crown in four seasons. The closest challenger, Pittsburgh’s Franco Harris, trailed him by a whopping 571 yards. Though hardly the type to barrel over opposing tacklers, like Payton or the Redskins’ John Riggins, Simpson’s blinding speed made him a defense’s nightmare. “When I was a rookie with the Patriots in 1975, we played O. J. at Buffalo,” said Steve Schubert, a Bears wide receiver. “I swear, I saw the guy come into the line of scrimmage, then float out the other side without being touched. He was smooth like silk.”

Drafted by the Bills out of USC with the first pick of the 1969 NFL Draft, Simpson walked with an air befitting a Hollywood star, not an upstate New York rookie. That’s the way Simpson viewed himself—as a multifaceted entertainer whose gifts as an athlete could be used as a gateway into other high-profile worlds. Simpson wanted to be the center of attention. He craved the bright lights and glitter, and had recently filmed a cameo role for ABC’s upcoming smash television hit,
Roots
. Among his close friends were Lee Marvin and Richard Burton.

“He was so much bigger than the team or the city of Buffalo,” said Tom Donchez, a running back drafted in the fourth round by the Bills in 1975. “Buffalo was a whistle stop for him—a place to pick up a check. O. J. would hold court and have an expert opinion on anything, merely because he was O. J. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t liked by teammates, because he was. He was funny and engaging. But I think you took him with a grain of salt.”

Simpson reveled in his place atop the NFL. With Jim Brown a decade retired and Gale Sayers five years gone, he reigned as the undisputable king of backs. It was with a skeptical eye and great cynicism, therefore, that Simpson began hearing about the kid from Jackson State trespassing on his terrain. When
Sports Illustrated
described Payton exploding “from his set like a grenade from an M79 launcher,” Simpson dismissed the praise as excessive hyperbole. When O’Connor, Payton’s backfield coach, said of his star, “God said he wanted a halfback, and he made Walter,” Simpson chuckled. He never publicly mocked or questioned Payton, but within the sanctity of the Bills’ locker room, Simpson scoffed. Hot backs came, hot backs went. Payton wouldn’t last for long.

Just one problem: In the midst of one of his best seasons, Simpson couldn’t shake free of Payton in the race for the NFL rushing title. As the Bills (who would finish 2-12) and the Bears (who would finish 7-7) slogged through forgettable campaigns, their featured stars went back and forth atop the leaderboard. Through the first six games, Payton held a seemingly insurmountable advantage—694 yards to 376 yards. Then Simpson went on a roll—tearing up the Jets and Patriots for a combined 276 yards in weeks seven and eight, and torching the hapless Lions for an NFL-record 273 yards in week twelve. Payton lost the rushing lead to Simpson on Thanksgiving Day, but regained it a week later with 110 yards against the Packers. On December 6, the second-to-last week of the regular season, he carved up the first-year Seahawks for a career-best 183 yards. It was his seventh hundred-yard game, a new team record, and though the contest was played in Seattle’s Kingdome, a nation was captivated.

Early in the game, a message scrawled across the video board informed the crowd that Simpson had just rushed for a seventy-five-yard touchdown against Miami. Seattle’s 60,510 fans cheered wildly. At that point, Payton had gained a mere nine yards on five carries, and the Seahawk defense, featuring ex-Bear Richard Harris, was playing with uncharacteristic ferocity. Pride mattered to Seattle coach Jack Patera, and the last thing he wanted was for his club to offer an opposing player easy access to a rushing title.

Yet Payton had pride, too. Led by the loquacious Harris, Seattle’s defensive players spent much of the first quarter barking inanities—“Not today! Not on our turf!”—that only served the infuriate Payton.

“You didn’t want to motivate Walter,” said Harper. “He fed off of that stuff.”

By the time the half ended, Payton had run for 114 yards, but he was hurting. Spasms in his diaphragm were making it difficult to breathe, and a doctor and trainer helped him into the locker room. As the second half began, Payton was nowhere to be found. With the video board continuing to display Simpson’s yardage (he gained 203 against Miami), however, Payton somehow regained his breath. Though the game was well in hand (the Bears won, 34–7), he carried nine times in the fourth quarter. Three runs nullified by penalties would have given him 227. Afterward, Pardee felt no need to hide the Bears’s motives. “We weren’t going to risk anything,” he said. “But the line wants Walter to win the rushing title.”

Entering the final week of the regular season, the NFL was filled with riveting story lines. Would the 12-1 Oakland Raiders fulfill their destiny and win the Super Bowl? Would the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, first-year laughingstocks, go 0-14? Could Colts quarterback Bert Jones finish strong enough to hold off Oakland quarterback Ken Stabler in the MVP race? (Answers: Yes, yes, and yes.)

All the news, however, paled in magnitude to the most fascinating rushing race in the fifty-six-year history of the league. With one game remaining, Payton led Simpson by a mere nine yards, 1,341 to 1,332.

Simpson-Payton carried the weight of a political election. People took sides—Payton was the upstart; the new kid. Not nearly as flashy as his rival, but gritty and determined. Simpson, on the other hand, was electric and explosive. He was the running back kids emulated in their backyards. Everyone wanted to be the Juice.

For their final game of the season, the 7-6 Bears would play host to the Denver Broncos, an 8-5 club with two things going for it: First, the Bronco players were comfortable enough in inclement weather so as not to flinch at stiff winds and twenty-three-degree temperatures. Second, Denver’s Orange Crush defense excelled against the run, allowing a paltry 3.4 yards per carry, second best in the league. Payton was hardly helped by Soldier Field’s cementlike turf, which only hardened with the winter cold. “There was actually a big hump in the middle of our field,” said Bo Rather. “And the surface burned your knees and elbows, and that shit never healed. There was no worse place for a back.”

Simpson, on the other hand, would be playing at Baltimore. The Colts had a lousy run defense, and Memorial Stadium offered a relatively cushy, well-maintained surface. Advantage: Juice.

With Soldier Field’s scoreboard, in the words of the
Tribune
, “not equipped with the conveniences of the twentieth century,” the Bears took the quasiembarrassing, quasi-quaint step of hiring cheerleaders from nearby Warren Township High School to carry placards around the sidelines to update fans on Simpson vs. Payton. Despite the weather, which included 13 mph winds, Soldier Field was packed. Among those in attendance were Holmes, Bob Hill, and Alyne Payton, Walter’s mother. The three flew up together from Mississippi on Holmes’ private Learjet. Planning for a celebration, Alyne brought with her one of Walter’s favorites—a raisin, pecan, and apple cake she had baked the day before.

Thanks to Baltimore’s Sunday Blue Laws (a sporting event could not start before two o’clock Eastern Standard Time), both games were scheduled to kick off at one P.M. central time, meaning neither back would know in advance what he needed to shoot for. “There’s no point in thinking about what’s happening halfway across the country,” Simpson said beforehand. “All I can do is concentrate on the Baltimore defense and hope that everything comes out well.”

“I’m just going to go out there and play up to my ability,” said Payton. “I’m not going to do anything different, I’m not going to go out there and make silly mistakes or take anything into my own hands, because I can’t do it.”

Because the Broncos had been eliminated from play-off contention, they could have understandably closed the season with limited interest. Instead, Denver’s players took the field and attacked. Blessed with Randy Gradishar and Tom Jackson, two of the sport’s best young linebackers, as well as an unblockable nose tackle named Rubin Carter, Denver’s defense overwhelmed the Bears, clogging Payton’s lanes and reducing Avellini, a subpar quarterback to begin with, to mud. He threw seventeen passes. He completed two.

The cheerleaders hired to flash placards had only bad news to report. In Baltimore, the Colts defense was playing dead, and Simpson accumulated seventy-five yards by halftime. “One of our guys was keeping up with Walter through a fan’s radio on the sideline,” Simpson said. “I had to keep telling him, ‘Hey, cool it. We gotta play this game here.’ ” Payton, on the other hand, found himself smothered by a wall of orange and blue. Two yards. Three yards. One yard. Four yards. Midway through the third quarter, he picked up the phone and called O’Connor in the press box. “My teammates are more interested in me winning the rushing title than us winning the game,” he said. “They’re not focused. So do us all a favor and take me out.” O’Connor refused. Avellini was a problem, the offensive line was a problem, the weather was a problem. Payton was not a problem. “He was the one thing we had going for us,” O’Connor said.

Late into the third quarter, with his stat line reading forty-nine yards on thirteen carries, Payton took a handoff, cut to the right, and was sandwiched by Jackson, Gradishar, and safety Bill Thompson. Payton felt his right ankle tweak, and he crumpled to the ground in pain. It took Fred Caito, the Bears’ trainer, less than a minute to diagnose a sprain. Payton’s day was over.

As their lone superstar gingerly walked from the field, Chicago’s fans let loose a long, powerful cheer. In the chilling silence that ensued, they watched Payton retreat to the bench, slump under a coat, place his head in his hands, and sob. Pardee strolled over to pat Payton on the back. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he told him. “You’re a champion.” The man questioned for his toughness only four months earlier had stepped up. Never again would anyone ask about Walter Payton’s drive.

The Bears lost, 28–14. Payton lost, 1,503 yards to 1,390 yards. (He did, however, surpass Gale Sayers’ single-season team rushing record.) Though loathe to admit such an emotion at the time, Payton craved the rushing title. In his mind, Simpson was the galloping gazelle from Southern Cal and he was the small-town kid from Mississippi. It was David vs. Goliath, only with the wrong ending.

“It was, I guess, the low point of my career,” he later said. “So much had been made of the fact that I had a chance to beat O.J. Simpson out for the rushing title. When I found myself lying there on the field and knew I had failed, it was like I didn’t want to get back up . . . I’m a competitor. Being injured, not finishing the game, was eating inside of me. I didn’t know how to cope.”

That night, with the ankle still throbbing, Payton coped. He hosted his mother, agent, and college coach at his one-bedroom apartment. Together, the four, along with Connie, laughed and hugged and talked old times.

When the evening finally came to an end, an exhausted Walter Payton went to bed.

He didn’t sleep a wink.

CHAPTER 14

THE STRANGEST RUN

HIS WORDS POSSESSED MEANING.

That’s one of the intriguing parts of young Walter Payton. He talked quietly and infrequently enough for members of the Chicago media to often wonder whether the twenty-four-year-old ever spoke at all. Hence, when Payton opened his mouth and made a bold declaration, the sentiment wasn’t to be taken lightly.

That’s why, as occupants of the Bears administrative offices stared down the front sports page of the November 1, 1977,
Chicago Tribune
, their jaws dropped.

PAYTON’S GOAL: QUIT IN 1 PIECE

By Ed Stone

Walter Payton is concerned enough about the long-range physical toll on him that he plans to retire from pro football after three more seasons.... “There’s just so much torment and brutality you can send your body through,” he explained. “I want to get out of pro football with all of the physical ability I came in with.”

Dating back to his early high school games, Payton refused to grant defenders the pleasure of bearing witness to his pain. Immediately after being hit, he jumped to his feet, patted the opposing player on the rear, and sprinted back toward the huddle. “I hated that,” said Jeff Siemon, the Vikings’ four-time Pro Bowl linebacker. “You’d stick him with a great shot, feel amazing about yourself . . . and then here’s Walter, smiling and congratulating you.”