Walter Payton was already the most dominant running back in the National Football League when he was running up a 45-degree garbage dump in Arlington Heights, Illinois, before sunrise in the summer of 1982. The hill was a former landfill, covered with black dirt and littered with glass shards and plastic. In the heat, it smelled like rotting garbage. Payton called it the widowmaker and ran it alone every morning until his legs stopped working, then sat at the bottom and ran again.
When someone finally asked what it felt like, his answer was direct: “Your legs, your buttocks, your back, your chest, your stomach, everything wants to leave you. ” No contract required him to be there. No coach was watching. At that point, he had already won five rushing titles, broken the single-game rushing record, and been named the league’s MVP.
To understand what drove him, the story goes back to his youth in Columbia, Mississippi. As a teenager, he ran 65 yards of sandbank along the Pearl River alone before anyone was on campus, setting the course himself with no coach and no stopwatch. Asked years later what separated him from other running backs, he paused and said he wanted it more than they did, especially on the days when no cameras, no fans, and no one at all was watching. The Chicago Bears drafted Payton fourth overall in 1975 out of Jackson State.
They knew the statistics, including his 464 career points, an NAIA record. His running style was unusual, with knees barely bent and power generated from the hip, built for delivering contact rather than avoiding it. His rookie season was unremarkable by NFL standards: 679 yards for a team that finished 4 and 10. The scouting report at the time described him as a good player, not yet special.
Those reports became notoriously inaccurate as his career developed. In November 1977, Payton played against Minnesota with a 101-degree fever, concealing the illness because he was afraid the training staff would pull him from the game. The Vikings defense had spent two weeks scheming specifically against him. He ran for 144 yards in the first half alone.
At halftime, Minnesota abandoned its game plan entirely, changing fronts and pursuit angles and walking a safety up to disrupt his reads. It made no difference. He ran for 131 more yards in the second half. That day, Payton broke O.
J. Simpson’s single-game rushing record with 275 yards, without telling anyone he was sick. In the locker room, a reporter asked what he had to say. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I just tried to do my job.
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On October 7, 1984, Payton began the morning at the widowmaker before sunrise, running it the same way he had for years. That afternoon, 53,752 fans at Soldier Field chanted his name before he had taken a single snap. He needed 67 yards to pass Jim Brown’s career rushing record of 12,312 yards, which had stood for 19 years. He gained 64 yards in the first half and said almost nothing at halftime while eating an orange.
Early in the second half, a pitch to the left gave him six yards. The game stopped. Brown’s record was gone, and players from both sidelines, including New Orleans Saints players, joined the ovation. The executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame walked onto the field.
Payton held the ball up, looked at the crowd, handed it over, and jogged back to the huddle. He finished the game with 154 yards and played three more seasons. Super Bowl XX on January 26, 1986, left a painful mark. The Bears led the Patriots 44 to 3, and the game had been decided since the first quarter.
Payton had 22 carries for 61 yards. He had been near the end zone but had not scored. With the outcome beyond doubt, coach Mike Ditka called a goal-line play, and the ball went to 335-pound defensive lineman William “Refrigerator” Perry, who scored a touchdown that became one of the most replayed moments of the game. Afterward, a team administrator found Payton alone in a small storeroom off the main corridor, still in uniform, not crying and not celebrating, just sitting.
He later told reporters it was a little heartening and that he would get over it. He never scored a touchdown in a Super Bowl. Ditka later called it the greatest regret of his life and said, “It never crossed my mind. I made a gross mistake.
” He said he did not realize what had happened until after the final whistle. Payton never said another word about it publicly. Payton retired after the 1987 season with 16,726 career rushing yards. He died on November 1, 1999, at age 46.
The landfill in Arlington Heights is now a golf course, seeded with grass and named Payton’s Hill, marked with a plaque. People visit it, stand at the bottom, and try to imagine running it in the dark and summer heat with no one watching. At Payton’s memorial service, Ditka stood at the podium for a long moment before speaking. He said, “When God said he would make the best football player who ever lived, he probably said two men, Jim Thorpe and Walter Payton.
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