The 1985 Bears are arguably the best team in pro football history. A 15-1 regular-season record. A team rife with Hall of Famers like Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton, and Walter Payton. A blowout in Super Bowl XX. They did it all.
But one black mark has followed the memory of perhaps the NFL’s most legendary team: Payton never got to score a touchdown in the title game.
It was lost in the shuffle of a 46-10 blowout, but indeed, the Bears’ best running back/player/human ever did not cross the goal line with the ball in his hands on that fateful January 1986 day in the Superdome.
Finally, the NFL made up for a particular coach’s past mistakes during Super Bowl LVI.
The littlest legends. The biggest game. It’s time to bring down the house. #SBLVI pic.twitter.com/3MRdgK5hYb
— NFL (@NFL) February 14, 2022
Payton and another Peyton took center stage in a commercial spot featuring some of the game’s greatest players under the control of some adorable little kids. With the legends deadlocked, it’s Payton who takes a pitch from an almost-sacked Peyton Manning and hurdles over a mass of bodies to score the game-winning touchdown.
”Maybe (coach) Mike Ditka got caught up in the game and didn’t notice it,” Payton told the Chicago Tribune’s Bob Verdi in 1986, a few weeks after the game. ”It’s a little hardening for me.”
Ditka would go on to call it his “greatest regret“, though not until after Payton died in 1999. Sunday helped right that wrong.
A small gesture of a commercial meant to commemorate football’s past, sure, but it wasn’t lost on the most important audience:
Walter Payton’s son, Jarrett, a sportscaster with WGN-TV in Chicago.
Yes, it’s only right that @walterpayton scores at the end of the commercial. @NFL #SuperBowl
— Jarrett Payton (@paytonsun) February 14, 2022
Is someone cutting onions? Oh goodness, I need a tissue.
Payton’s commercial touchdown won’t make up for his no-score in an actual Super Bowl, but it does a heck of a lot to make up for old wounds. After almost 40 years, the Paytons, and Bears fans everywhere, can heal.
