Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. You can order the book version here. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.
In the later stages of Walter Payton’s career, the strangest thing happened when the Bears played on the road. Fans who were there hoping the Bears would lose started to clap when Payton ran out of the tunnel during pregame introductions. First, it was softly, politely. But the noise they made became a rumble and then a roar. Soon, tens of thousands of people who wanted Walter Payton to lose were on their feet, showing their appreciation for what he had done and who he was.
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It didn’t matter if their colors were green and gold, purple and yellow, Honolulu blue and silver, or creamsicle orange and white. People who loved this game loved this player.
He was an average-sized human, just 5-foot-10, 202 pounds. He played for the franchise that defined toughness, the franchise of George Halas, Bronko Nagurski, Ed Sprinkle, Mike Ditka and Dick Butkus. So it was left to Payton to redefine toughness.
The essence of the game he played was contact, and no running back ever was better at contact. It wasn’t just run-into-you, run-over-you contact. It was explosive, check-your-teeth contact. “I love the contact,” he once said. But he didn’t have to say it because every highlight video said it better.
The kind of contact he loved was supposed to be associated with a linebacker with a nickname like “Killer,” not a running back they called “Sweetness.” In his 1978 autobiography “Sweetness,” he said, unsurprisingly, “I’ve never had an opponent call me Sweetness.”
Payton had 4,330 touches in his career, and he ended almost every one of them with a violent collision — the lowering of the shoulder, the firing of the hips, the ramming of a forearm. Payton never sought the safety of the sideline. He never went down to avoid a hit. He rarely ever fell backward at the end of a play. He made defenders think his skin was armor and his hands were morning stars.
“I was probably the runner who wouldn’t go down easy,” he said in his second autobiography, “Never Die Easy,” which was published after his 1999 death at the age of 45 from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disease. “Like one of those cowboy movies where a guy is coming at him and he gets shot once and he gets shot again, and again and again, and he’s still walking and then all of a sudden a big explosion goes boom, an arm over here, arm over there, leg over there and they’re still trying to get him down. That’s the type of runner I was.”
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In addition to being the runner who wouldn’t go down easy, he also was the runner who would spring back up easy. Payton didn’t drag himself to his feet or roll over and push himself up against the ground. He popped up like a whack-a-mole. Even from the bottom of a pile of linemen, he somehow was the first to his feet. And he did it with a smile, never a grimace.
What happened after the whistle with Payton was more dispiriting to his opponents than what happened before it. He took my best shot, and it hurt me more than him.
Payton wasn’t always that way. He started his first training camp with an elbow injury. Teammates questioned his toughness and work ethic during his rookie season. He begged out of practice before a game against the Steelers because his ankle was bothering him, and head coach Jack Pardee told him he couldn’t play in the game because he didn’t practice. Backup Mike Adamle performed so well in Payton’s place that he replaced Payton in the starting lineup in subsequent games. Missing that game was one of the only regrets of his career.
Depending on perspective, either it was the worst thing that happened to him or the best.
He reported to training camp the following year after an intense training regimen that included high-stepping through the sands along the Pearl River in his native Mississippi. He worked so hard, he said, that he struggled with dizziness and nausea throughout training camp in 1976.
“He was in the best condition I’ve ever seen anybody in,” Bears receiver Bo Rather said, according to Jeff Pearlman’s book “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton.”
From then on, he refused to sit out a game.
Payton’s mystique of invincibility didn’t just happen. He created and fostered it. He played with fractured ribs on four separate occasions. He was undeterred by a turf toe that required weekly injections. He played with several knee injuries and more than one shoulder separation. A nerve injury in his shoulder didn’t prevent him from taking the field.
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Payton refused to allow his opponent to see him in pain. Bears trainer Fred Caito said he had to go out on the field only once for Payton, when he injured an ankle. Bears center Jay Hilgenberg said Payton insisted Caito not touch his leg because he didn’t want to reveal what was bothering him. Payton eventually walked off the field by himself. He wouldn’t allow anyone to examine him on the sideline either.
“Fred (Caito) would walk alongside and put a Darvon painkiller in his hand and he’d go over and get a Gatorade,” longtime Bears strength coach Clyde Emrich said.
He probably shouldn’t have played in the most productive game of his career. In the days leading up to a game against the Vikings in November of 1977, Payton had a fever of 104 degrees. As teammates warmed up on the field, he was queasy and weak and experiencing hot and cold flashes.
Payton didn’t think he would be able to play, but did he ever, running for a then-single-game record 275 yards.
Bears offensive tackle Ted Albrecht said he and receiver James Scott had to prop Payton up in the huddle.
What made the performance even more remarkable is it came against a division-winning team that featured the legendary “Purple People Eaters” defense.
“He had one of the best days I’ve ever seen a running back have,” defensive lineman Jim Marshall said in 2000. “Especially against our defense. We were, at the time, at the peak of our game. There weren’t any players we couldn’t stop. And he was virtually unstoppable that day.”
It’s not like the Vikings didn’t know what was coming. The Bears ran it 63 times (40 times by Payton) and threw it seven that day, and used only three running plays. Bears offensive coordinator and renowned passing guru Sid Gillman took such affront to the conservative play calling by fellow assistant Fred O’Connor that Gillman quit after the season.
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The day after the game of his life, amid a season in which he would be voted the NFL’s most valuable player, Payton could have been under the covers sipping chicken soup. Instead, he was practicing with the scout team.
“I don’t think anybody played with as much heart as Walter Payton,” Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsome once said.
With rare commitment and competitiveness, Payton raised the bar for every group of men with whom he ever went to battle. It was nearly impossible to wear the uniform he was wearing and not try to give more, dig deeper and care more.
Payton usually was the first Bear out to practice every day and the last to head home. He wanted every edge he could get. Payton took the insoles out of his KangaROOS cleats and wore only a thin baseball-style sanitary sock so he could feel the seven cleats on the ground against the sole of his foot.
In an era when look-at-me became popular, Payton handed the ball to the referee after every touchdown and jogged back to the sideline. On the other hand, he arrived at training camp in Platteville, Wis., in a helicopter and stayed in his own trailer while teammates slept in dorm rooms.
Many of his teammates found him mysterious and distant. His childish pranks — pantsing and goosing the unsuspecting, throwing M80s in the bathroom, pouring drain opener in jockstraps — were annoying, but Payton always seemed to be there with a hand on a shoulder when it was most needed. He routinely was kind to players who had no chance of making the team. Payton wept with Bob Thomas after the kicker was cut after 10 seasons. He was one of the only Bears who tried to make Doug Flutie feel welcome when the Bears acquired the quarterback in 1986.
In many ways, Payton was the adhesive that held the great Bears of 1985 together, a leader through spirit and example. But he also was moody. After the Bears won Super Bowl XX by the score of 46-10, Bob Costas wanted to interview him for the network postgame show. Payton couldn’t be found initially because he was pouting in a closet over not scoring a touchdown. After some time, he gained his composure and fulfilled his media obligations.
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Like always, he popped back up.
Payton was difficult to get a feel for, even in his running style. Most runners try to beat defenders the same way over and over, playing to their strengths. Payton could go any which way on any given handoff. His runs were more staccato than melodic.
Stutter step.
Glide.
Small step.
Big step.
High step.
Twist.
Hurdle.
Pause.
Sideways shift.
Burst.
And then a power finish.
The extra yard was his, always.
Most can only play one instrument. Payton played them all. He was the Bears’ emergency quarterback, kicker and punter. He threw eight career touchdown passes on 34 attempts. He also averaged 31.7 yards on 17 career kick returns. In practice, he used to field punts — behind his back. Payton hoped for a chance to play defensive back. Pardee once said one of the things he did best was tackle defenders after the Bears quarterbacks threw interceptions.
He could have been a Pro Bowl receiver — when he retired, he had caught more passes than any running back in history. During the 13 years he played, only nine men in the NFL had more receptions than his 492. Five of them are Hall of Fame wide receivers, and two are Hall of Fame tight ends.
Payton took as much pride in clearing holes as he did in running through them. Jim Finks, who drafted Payton, called him the best blocker in the NFL. Bears running backs coach Hank Kuhlmann told Pearlman that Payton was a better blocker than runner. One of the plays Payton was proudest of was stoning Lawrence Taylor on a blitz pickup.
Hall of Fame coach and longtime commentator John Madden said Payton was the greatest football player in history and that every player in the league should be given a video or book that details Payton’s approach to the game.
That’s why Walter Payton was applauded, even by the enemy.
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photo: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)
