TBT: THE SUDDEN STEPS OF Sweetness
A LOOK BACK AT WALTER PAYTON’S SIX BROKEN TACKLES ON ONE RUN AGAINST THE CHIEFS
Some pull up the play to remember. Some never had to forget.
What they see is from 38 years ago on a nondescript Sunday at Soldier Field. It’s when Walter Payton reeled off perhaps the greatest run of his career.
It came against the Chiefs, whom the Bears will play this Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium. Today’s Bears sit at 1-3, desperate like that ’77 team, which was 3-5 and down 17-0 in the third quarter when Sweetness decided to create magic.
Actually, there was little decision to it. Nothing could script a run like this, which started in the center and bounced to the right hash, then back inside, then up the middle, through six would-be tacklers on the way to an 18-yard gain.
“That was his greatest run ever. … I don’t even know what No. 2would be,” said retired ABC7 anchor Brad Palmer, who did color commentary for the game on WBBM Radio. “… You talk about making something out of nothing. That epitomized Walter Payton.”
When people pull up the play now, they see it in the context of a Hall-of-Fame career, knowing the outcome and how it saved the season. But maybe to best appreciate the spontaneity of such a play, you have to go back to the moment on Nov. 13, 1977, or at least the next-closest thing.
So start with the radio call: It’s by Joe McConnell, Palmer’s partner at WBBM.
“They give the ball to Payton on a sweep to the rightside…”
The phrase could be seared onto archived Bears playbooks from 1975 to 1987. In a run-first era, the always-churning Payton became the Bears offense on the way to nine Pro Bowls, the Hall of Fame and top-five all-time finishes in carries, rushing yards, all-purpose yards and rushing touchdowns.
But this was before anyone knew about any of that. Payton was just in his third season and second as a feature back. After he broke out with 1,390 yards and 13 scores the year before, the Bears understood Payton enough to know that giving him the ball was a good idea.
They had no idea he’d do this.
“…He gets a block from Revie Sorie, spins back inside…”
This is the part where everything veers off-script. The play as it was designed was over, at least in Payton’s mind. He spotted defenders crashing down from the outside and turned back inward, where he’d face even more tacklers as well as the space to run through them.
This was Payton understanding himself. He never saw himself as a breakaway back, but he’d later forge an icon as a tackle-breaking, churning, fighting-for-every-inch rugger suited for a cold Midwestern city like Chicago.
Payton always weighed in at 207 or 208, said Clyde Emrich, who has coached strength and
conditioning with the Bears since the ’50s. But he was fierce, dating back to his days at Jackson State, when he’d wrap his forearms in cardboard for practice so he could smack defenders in their facemasks whenever they got near. Payton’s favorite phrase was “Never die easy.” He was a chiseled rock, and while he couldn’t have known if his 207-pound frame could power through linemen and ’backers, he knew he had to try.
“…rips by one man…”
It wasn’t just any man. This was Emmitt Thomas, a defensive back who now joins Payton in the Hall of Fame. The Chiefs also had Hall-of-Fame linebacker Willie Lanier, as well as a three-time Pro Bowl tackling machine at safety in Gary Barbaro. Payton ran through them all. “I didn’t give up because it was well known that you couldn’t get him down with ease, and he was an escape artist,” Chiefs defensive tackle John Lohmeyer said in the 2011 book, “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton.”
“I tried tackling him,” Lohmeyer said. “We all did.”
“…still on his feet…”
Payton lived on the balls of his feet, making him difficult to bring down. That balance drew from his strength, which he harbored away from the team facility.
As a Bear, Payton worked out at a nearby health club. Emrich never saw what he did there, but he OK’d the alternative when he saw the results. At 207 pounds, Payton could deadlift around 600 and bench press close to 400, Emrich recalled.
A former Olympic weight lifter, Emrich has built a career on the idea that power is strength in motion. The ability to break tackles relies more on strength than some vague ideal of inner will.
Payton’s best strength lied in his legs. He built it on uphill runs, pounding and pounding on those limbs so they could drive defenders when he moved them.
Emrich got to see that strength pour out on the hill and later in runs on a football field each week. He always looked on from the sidelines.
“I was there watching,” Emrich said, “because I knew Walter would do something.”
“…struggles away at the 20, still battling…”
The entire play was a battle, and so was the game.
A couple plays after Sweetness happened, the 3-5 Bears were down 10, and then they were down three after another Payton run, and then they were trading scores, and suddenly Bob Avellini was hitting Greg Latta down the seam for a 37-yard scoring strike with three seconds remaining to win 28-27.
The Bears wouldn’t lose again in the regular season on their way to a 9-5 record and the first playoff appearance of Payton’s career. They could thank the NFL MVP, who finished the year with career bests of 1,852 rushing yards, 14 rushing touchdowns and 5.5 yards per carry.
“Let’s combine everything here: No quarterback, no wide receivers, average of- fensive line, three great defensive players,” Jeff Pearlman, the author of the biography, “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton,” told Chicago Football.
“Take all this into account, the score of the game, the situation ... I don’t know what more you could ask for.”
And maybe only Payton himself would disagree.
“…breaks away at the 15, the 10, the 5 and down at the 4-yardline…”
This is the stage that’s easy for the outsider to overlook – the one tackle he didn’t break – but Payton never did.
Decades after the play, after Payton fathered a son named Jarrett and a daughter named Brittney, he collected VHS tapes of his games that Jarrett would watch in a loft upstairs. When Jarrett would put this run on, Payton would stare in silence, his face cringing with the guilt he’d confided in Jarrett plenty of times: He thought he should have scored.
What if he’d picked up his feet with that pony step he made so famous? What if he’d just kept moving with that Chiefs linebacker around his waste, the way he did on that 1980 run with the poor Lions defender riding for five yards on his back? How memorable would this run be then? “He always expected more,” Jarrett Payton said. “He was always expecting greatness in everything he did.”
The play was greatness, though. Last year, ESPN.com readers voted it the best Bears play in history, beating out two other finalists – Devin Hester’s 92-yard kickoff return and William “The Fridge” Perry’s touchdown rumble – both of which came in Super Bowls.
Jim Brown has called it Payton’s best run. Emrich, Pearlman and Palmer all said the same. Jarrett Payton seems to be one of the few who is torn, influenced by years of watching his dad cringe at the replay.
After 38 years, the play lives on in memories and videos and radio calls for people living different agendas – the strength coach in his ‘80s who continues to work for the Bears, the retired color commentator who chronicles the plays on a YouTube account, the son who collects the faded photos as away to remember his lost dad.
They all seem to conclude like the radio call did.
“…A sensational run by Walter Payton.”