Sweetness (54 page)

When he was the only story in town, it was easy to say, “I don’t want the attention.”

Now that the attention didn’t exist, he wanted it.

The song was a bad idea.

Walter Payton knew it was a bad idea because this sort of thing never works out in the end. Why didn’t he talk trash? Because the minute you tell an opponent he stinks, he comes back and tackles you for a five-yard loss. Why didn’t he brag and boast after a hundred-and-fifty-yard game? Because a thirty-yard game is inevitably around the corner. Payton knew what he wanted his image to be (and what Holmes had insisted it
should be
)—family man, happy, accessible, agreeable, kid friendly—and loudmouth braggart wasn’t on the list.

That being said, really, what was he supposed to do on that mid-November day when Gault, the explosive wide receiver with stars in his eyes, told him that the rest of the high-profile Bears were planning on recording a rap song, and that proceeds would help feed the Chicago homeless? The title itself, “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” symbolized everything Payton detested. Having had his hopes dashed time and time again, the last thing Payton wanted was for his cocky team to appear even cockier. He wasn’t the only Bear to feel that way. “I disagreed strongly with it,” said Covert. “Why would we want to tell people after nine or ten games that we were going to win the Super Bowl? I didn’t want to get the shit kicked out of us in the play-offs.”

Despite reservations, on the morning of November 23, Payton shuffled into a suburban Chicago recording studio, alongside Gault, Perry, McMahon, Singletary, and a handful of others. He didn’t want to be there, but didn’t want to be left out, either. How could the Chicago Bears do a song and not include Sweetness? How could Sweetness let others take all the glory?

Because he was the greatest of Bears, as well as a future Hall of Famer, Payton was selected to rap the tune’s opening lyrics. The words were written by Dick Meyer, a slimy aspiring record producer who initially approached Gault with the “Shuffle” idea, and they were inane.

Well, they call me Sweetness,
And I like to dance . . .

Ever the
24 Karat Black Gold
star, Payton pulled it off without a hitch. “Walter was the best of the bunch, by far,” said Darryl Krall, technical director of the “Shuffle” video. “He had that high Michael Jackson falsetto, and his sense of rhythm was perfect.”

One day later the Bears destroyed the Falcons, 36–0, running their record to 12-0 and upping the team’s confidence to an all-time high. Over the past three games, Chicago had outscored the opposition 104–3. With 102 yards, Payton was now leading the NFC and in pursuit of his second NFL rushing crown. “This team has not reached its peak,” he said afterward. “We’re capable of scoring sixty points. We don’t know how good we are, and that’s kind of scary.”

“We aren’t satisfied yet,” added Singletary. “If you set your goals as being the best team of all time, the best players of all time, how can you be satisfied? People are waiting, expecting, for us to hit that slump. Will it be the Dallas game? No, maybe it will be the week after Dallas and the week before Miami. No, maybe it will be Miami.

“People are saying we’ve got to have that one day, that one game. But why? Why do we have to? If you keep trying to improve, every week, why does there have to be that one week? When will it happen? Maybe it won’t happen.”

On the day after the Atlanta triumph, a group of ten Bears posed for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” jacket cover. For roughly two hours, the men—clad in clean blue jerseys and white pants—stood inside a room, making wacky and tough and serious and goofy faces for a photographer named Paul Natkin and embracing the magic of a 12-0 roll. Payton, again, didn’t feel right about the whole thing. The next game was a Monday night trip to Miami, where the 8-4 Dolphins awaited. Spearheaded by a twenty-four-year-old quarterback named Dan Marino and his two young, fleet wide receivers, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper (aka the Marks Brothers), Miami featured a group of offensive players who believed they could score on anyone in the league—Chicago included. “We are going to kick the Bears’ butts,” Duper said that week. “The Bears are in for the treat of their lives.”

For Miami, there was added motivation in facing a team with an unblemished record. In NFL history, only one franchise, the 1972 Dolphins, had gone undefeated. Those Dolphins were coached by Don Shula, as were these Dolphins. There was a connection and a
need
to win. Throughout the week, members of that ’72 group, including legendary figures like Nick Buoniconti, Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, and Bob Kuechenberg, attended practices, pressuring the modern Dolphins to find a way.

The Bears, on the other hand, were surprisingly casual. When the chartered plane left Chicago, it had been fifteen degrees and snowy. When it set down in Miami, the temperature was seventy-five degrees, with a cloudless sky. The siren call of South Beach beckoned. “We didn’t care about that game,” said Butler, the rookie kicker. “We weren’t trying to go undefeated—we were trying to win a title. So when we got to Miami all we were focused on was having a good time. We all went out the night before the game, then slept in as late as we could.”

“Every time we had a game in Florida, some Bears fans were going, too—and the Sunday night before that Miami game I think I saw just about all of them out there somewhere,” Steve McMichael, the veteran defensive end, wrote in his book,
Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline
. “I think we started out at Hooters and it just denigrated from there.”

As if the
Monday Night Football
matchup weren’t hyped enough based upon the presence of the undefeated Bears, the media labeled it as a battle of the decades. A Miami radio station came up with a song about defrosting the Refrigerator. A Miami TV reporter visited the city’s zoo to interview a bear and a dolphin. “Reporters fell from the sky like a seven-inch snow,” Singletary wrote in his autobiography,
Calling the Shots
. “We were completely covered. They waited for us in our lockers and called our homes; the practice field was staked out like the Democratic National Convention.”

Immediately before kickoff, Chicago’s players glanced across the field. Lining Miami’s sideline were all the old legends from ’72, arms folded, expressions stern. “It was like they were trying to put the voodoo on us,” said Ken Taylor, a rookie safety with the Bears. “They’re standing there with their legs kind of spread apart like Superman or something, and they got their big arms folded like they are measuring us up. It was all just kind of weird.”

With McMahon out for a third straight game with an injured right shoulder, the start went to Fuller, who found himself confused by Miami’s defense and frustrated by his receivers’ slippery fingers. Most shocking was the sight of Ryan’s defense, thought to be impenetrable, being shredded by Marino, whose forty-eight touchdown passes one season earlier set an NFL record. Back at the University of Pittsburgh, Marino had roomed with Covert, the Bears’ offensive tackle. A couple of days before the Dolphins game, Ryan sauntered up to Covert and told him, “We’re going to blitz your asshole buddy this week and knock him on his ass.”

“If you do,” Covert replied, “he’ll kill you.”

Ryan ignored the warning. Marino, blessed with the league’s quickest release, killed him.

The Dolphins led 31–10 at halftime, and in the locker room Ditka and Ryan—enemies on the sunniest of days—exchanged a couple of wildly thrown punches before being separated. Ditka began screaming at Ryan early in the second quarter, wondering how much longer he was going to cover Nat Moore, Miami’s speedy wide receiver, with a linebacker. Ryan colorfully advised the head coach to back off. “Ditka was right,” said Dan Hampton. “He was basically saying, ‘Hey Buddy, quit being an asshole and put a nickel back in there on Nat Moore.’ ”

All the while, Payton sat by his locker, boiling. Even though Miami ranked last in the league against the run, and even though Payton had cleared a hundred yards in a league-record seven straight games, Ditka didn’t hand him the ball until late in the first quarter, with the Dolphins leading 10–7. For some reason, the Bears were leaning on Fuller, a castoff from Kansas City. “We have the number one running game in football, and Miami has the worst run defense,” said Hampton. “So what does genius Ditka do? We throw the ball.”

“I could have told you they would lose that game,” said Holmes, Payton’s agent. “Everyone on that team was all swelled up, cocky, and thinking they walked on water. Even with Walter, I could tell the fire wasn’t there. They all wanted the stardom the Fridge was getting, and there was a ton of jealousy. You can’t win with that hanging over a team.”

Early in the fourth quarter, with the score 38–24, Fuller sprained his ankle and McMahon—who had begged Ditka to start the game—was inserted. He marched Chicago down the field, but threw a costly interception with 6:12 remaining to seal the Bears’ fate. When Chicago regained possession, McMahon ignored the coaches and repeatedly handed the ball to Payton. Though it ranked about 12,471 on the night’s storyline list, Payton was trying to break the consecutive hundred-yard rushing games mark he shared with O.J. Simpson and Earl Campbell.

“We’re fourteen points down and Ditka sends in a pass play,” McMahon said. “I said, ‘Look, boys, we’re down fourteen points. We’re already in the play-offs. Let’s get this man the yards he deserves.’ Not one guy in the huddle had a problem with that. But Mike knew I didn’t call the play he [ordered], so he starts yelling and screaming. I give the ball to Walter. They were only rushing three at this point, and he busts up for good yardage.” With the veins on his neck bulging and his brown eyes about to explode from the sockets, Ditka called a time-out. When McMahon reached the sideline, the coach lit into him.

“Hey, Mike, you know they’re dropping eight,” McMahon replied. “Walter only needs about fifteen more yards for his record.”

Ditka calmed down. “What?” he said.

“The record,” McMahon replied. “His record.”

Ditka had known nothing of it. “Yeah,” he said, “we’ll get him his record. But first we’re going to do this play.”

McMahon nodded as Ditka called for a pass to Dennis McKinnon. When he returned to the huddle, McMahon flashed a wide smile. “Boys,” he said, “the shit is going to hit the fan, but we’re going to run the ball again.”

McMahon lined up behind center and looked toward Ditka, who knew he was being ignored. He threw his clipboard in the air and shrugged. Payton wound up with 121 yards on twenty-three carries, and while they were largely empty calories amassed at the end of a blowout, the running back was eternally grateful to his quarterback. From that moment on, McMahon could do no wrong.

Despite being annihilated before millions of spectators (the game was the most-viewed
Monday Night Football
telecast ever, with an astonishing 29.6 rating), most of the Bears remained undeterred. “Hey, we’re human,” Otis Wilson said afterward.

“This is not a catastrophe,” added Singletary.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Ditka said. “And we proved it.”

“A lot of guys were walking off of the field like, ‘Finally, the pressure is off of us,’ ” said Covert. “When we got beat by Miami—I didn’t want to lose, but it kind of lifted the pressure.”

Win or lose, on Tuesday morning at eight the players were expected to meet at Park West, a well-known nightclub on Chicago’s North Side, for the taping of “The Super Bowl Shuffle” video. Having assumed the Bears would demolish the Dolphins, Dick Meyer, the song’s producer, booked the date two weeks in advance. He spoke to Gault via phone immediately after the loss, and was assured the Bears would still be there.

“Willie asked me if I’d be in it as we were flying back from Miami,” said Hilgenberg. “I said, ‘Hey, Willie, we just got killed on national TV. You think I’m gonna help you sing a song about the Super Bowl? No thank you. I don’t want any part of that.’ ”

Though the Bears were a tight-knit group, there was something about Gault that rubbed many the wrong way. He was the prettiest guy on a rugged team; unwilling to throw a hard block or cross the middle of the field. “If I asked Willie to run an extra pattern it was as if I’d asked him to cut his nuts off,” said Bob Avellini, the former quarterback. “He didn’t want to play football. He wanted to make money.” Early in his career Gault told the
Tribune
that, with a little work, he could make Payton a faster, better player. (“I could have gotten him from a four-point-six to a four-point-four forty,” Gault said. “He had a hitch when he ran and wasted some motion.”) The suggestion did not go over well.