Walter Payton’s election to the Hall of Fame was prompt, without embellishment or debate. This is more a surprise than it should have been, because Payton has always come with conditions. He wasn’t fast enough or stylish enough or memorable enough. Being the best was never enough.
Payton turns out to be as much a Hall of Fame lock as his last coach was an afterthought. They are both there now, shining symbols of the Bears’ ever-dimming Super Bowl season.
It has been five years, the minimum wait, since Payton carried a football, and the Hall is just where he was supposed to be.
Except that Payton doesn’t have the distinction of going in alone, the honor serves the man and, more necessarily, alerts the world’s lazy memory.
Down on the Rose Bowl floor, a Dallas runner has collided with his third or fourth Buffalo tackler. Bob Trumpy blurts out to America and assorted other nations: “Emmitt Smith has broken more tackles than any man his size in the history of football.”
And Trumpy had just read minutes earlier the list of this year’s Hall of Fame inductees. Payton should not be so easily forgotten. What about Walter?
This is the second time in a week that exact question had occurred to me. In one of those mass press inquisitions where several stories are pursued at once, I wait out inquiries of Dave Wannstedt as to why the prototype modern running back is short and muscular, not especially fast but tough and shifty.
“You always think of large, classic backs like Jim Brown and O.J. Simpson,” says Tom Boswell of the Washington Post. “And now we have Emmitt Smith and Thurman Thomas.”
That is a chronology that needs a middle, but Wannstedt accepts the premise, and throws in Barry Sanders of Detroit. I wonder where either of these men spent the ’70s and ’80s. What about Walter?
I do not blame Boswell, whose love and genius is writing baseball, but maybe someone at Halas Hall should point out No. 34’s likeness to Wannstedt.
Payton’s career does not need defending, although it always seems to need reminding. Rather than a bridge between Brown/Simpson and Smith/Thomas, Payton is the point where the generations meet. There was nobody like him before and there has been nobody like him since.
Payton is so special, he is likely to be the only offensive player from the most celebrated Bears team to make the Hall.
Great teams tend to send players in clumps, as the Packers did, the Dolphins, the Steelers. Guard Larry Little was the fifth Dolphin from the undefeated season, and maybe the last. Chuck Noll, never coach of the year although he coached four Super Bowl winners, gets his spot along with six Steelers players: Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert and Mel Blount.
Bill Walsh precedes Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and Jerry Rice from the great 49ers teams.
But who else from the Bears offense will join Payton? Was that one-loss, Super-Bowl-rout of a season enough to carry any of Payton’s companions to Canton, Ohio, with him?
From the defense, Mike Singletary gets in without dispute. He’ll get this honor in 1997. Dan Hampton should, but is no cinch. Richard Dent is doubtful.
Any of Payton’s blockers? Jay Hilgenberg has to be the shortest shot. Quarterback? Only Jim McMahon’s headband will get there. Receivers? Not a one. William Perry got Payton’s touchdown in the Super Bowl. The only way Perry gets to Canton is as a tourist.
What about Walter? There was only one. Amazing anyone forgets that.
