Nobody did it better

After Lori recorded it on our DVR, I finally got around to watching A Football Life: Walter Payton (link shows a clip from the show) that aired on NFL Network. It brought back some good memories.

In 1977, as a second-grader, I started watching football for the first time. I collected football cards. I remember not only watching the Bears in the early game, but watching late games, usually on NBC, after the sun had gone down that dark November and December. My first lesson in my NFL education was an amazing one: Witnessing Walter Payton's incredible 1977 season in which he rushed for 1,852 yards (in 14 games) and helped the Bears to the playoffs.

CBS gushed over Payton all season, setting his runs captured by NFL Films to song: Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better." I hear that and still think back to that late fall and winter. I don't know how much local radio played the song (and this was a memorable winter for music), but CBS was all over it.

I remembered many of the Payton moments featured in the show, and I recall many that weren't. There was the game he passed Jim Brown as the NFL's all-time leading rusher. There was the game Doug Flutie threw a touchdown to Payton in the end zone, and Payton responded by passing the ball into the stands. There were a few passing touchdowns. There was the game in which he played fullback, giving rookie Neal Anderson (Payton's heir apparent) a chance to play halfback, all the while delivering intense blocks to the defense. There was the way Payton would get tackled, extend the ball as far forward as he can, place it on the ground, then spring up before the tacklers would even get to their knees. There were all the receptions -- he caught 492 passes, more than any player in Bears history (in five years, I bet Matt Forte breaks this record). There was his last game, a loss to the Redskins in the playoffs, with the Washington players patting him on the back as the last futile plays were for naught, knowing they were witnessing the end of a sweet career.

I've been wanting to read Sweetness, the recent biography that doesn't exactly paint Payton's life off the field, particularly after he retired, in a positive light. He was incredible yet mortal, human, at the same time. Thirty-four years after my first season of watching the NFL, watching clips of Payton's prowess still makes me want to cheer.

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