Chief Running Bear

There are some---close observers of N.F.L. games---who think Walter Payton can fly. And there are others---defensive linemen, mostly---who are certain of it. On third and short, he has been known to leap skyward, where he hangs suspended some six feet off the turf until opposing linemen have passed beneath him. Then he glides down to a perfect one-point landing; sometimes the head hits first, sometimes a shoulder pad. After a short roll, he bounds to his feet, first-down yardage behind him.

In a sweep to the right, Payton will follow his blockers until they fail to provide a hole, whereupon, against all rules of nature, he reverses direction without losing speed. Dodging back against the flow, he will eat up 30 yards in lateral movement to gain ten. Ask him later what he did and Payton can't tell you. "Some of the stuff I do, I don't realize until I watch the films. It's amazing what you can do when you're scared."

Payton is joking; he has no fear. If pressed, he will admit to a certain amount of respect for opposing linemen, but his particular act calls for coolness under fire, not terror. Everything is calculated. Payton has confidence in his body, his strength and his gymnastic ability. What looks to the fan like a mouse scurrying through tenpins is a careful, though rapid-fire, exercise in running options. It comes, he says, "from a lot of practice, a lot of repetition and reading your blocks. I look for a hole and go through it.

"No matter who's opposing you, he could be the best defensive lineman in the league, but he can only take what you give him. If you give him the tight-end side, that leaves all the room on the outside to gain your yardage."

Although he's hit often and hard, while he's running he never considers the possibility of being hit. His objective is to avoid being touched, to thread the needle without grazing the sides. Thinking about being hit would slow him down. "You can't be looking to break tackles, you have to avoid them altogether. One of the things that I do. if I see no alternative to getting hit, is to simply explode into the guy. Instead of him hitting me, we're hitting each other. Then, the next time I come around, he'll be thinking, Well, the last time I tried to get this guy, he hit me; and, in that one second of indecision on his part, I'll have the opportunity to get away."

Payton has been compared to such legendary running backs as Jim Brown, Gale Sayers and, of course, O. J. Simpson. But he is reluctant to join in such comparisons. "They got their yards their way, I get mine my way. How can you compare us?" Actually, Payton's running style is most similar to Sayers'. He doesn't have the speed of Simpson or the intimidating bulk of Brown. Also, he is a relatively small 5'10 1/2", 205 pounds. But he plays all out all the time and he is the surest bet in the league to break Simpson's all-time season rushing record of 2003 yards.

Payton was taught to play full throttle at all-black Jackson State University in Mississippi. He set the N.C.A.A. record of 66 touchdowns in a conference he considers so rough-and-tumble that he thinks of his current assignment as something of a piece of cake. "I get more chance to rest here than I did in college. I've seen everybody play and the black-conference teams play a far more aggressive, more physical game. If any of the teams I played on in my four years there were to play last year's championship Notre Dame team, Notre Dame would get beat. And the same thing would happen if they played Grambling or any of the other schools in the black conference. A lot of people say if I'd gone to another school, I would have gotten the Heisman Trophy, but I wouldn't trade the experience I got from Jackson State."

Although the jump from college ball to pro ball was easy for Payton, he did have adjustments to make:

"It's show business," he says, laughing. "We're like the Jackson 5 coming onto the field. You know it's show business when, like the Bears, you get $5,000,000 for TV rights before the season. You know it when you can't tape your shoes on because it flares on the cameras. In college, you didn't think, Am I looking OK for the camera? All you thought about was doing your job."

So how do you defense such a man? Does he have an Achilles' heel? Payton gave us a clue: "There are three things that really scare me; dogs, hypodermic needles and spiders." Which may explain why some N.F.L. scouts have been scouring the college ranks for eight-legged line-backers, 250-pound nurses and hard-hitting Dobermans.