When the Bears took Walter Payton with the fourth pick of the 1975 draft, they were getting the player who would leave the game as the NFL’s career rushing leader. They in fact got much, much more: the standard against which all future Bears would be measured.
Payton became the prototype of what the Bears would seek in a player, particularly one they were considering as a high draft choice. He would give rise to a phrase that has now become commonplace, even if the ideal it represented was not:
“I used the term all the time, `the total package,’ ” said Bill Tobin, the team’s former vice president of player personnel. “I used him as the example for all our people, our scouts, other owners, everyone I talked to about hiring the total package–ability, intelligence, grace, compassion.
“He was the whole package, not just on the field. It was how he conducted his personal life, how he practiced, how he cared about the people around him, how he put the team first. Walter always put the team first, always.”
Tobin, who had scouted Payton while on the Green Bay Packers’ staff, was hired by then-Bears GM Jim Finks as the team’s director of pro scouting in January of 1975. He was involved shortly thereafter in drafting Payton, following the selections of quarterback Steve Bartkowski by Atlanta, defensive tackle Randy White by Dallas and guard Ken Huff by the then-Baltimore Colts.
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Every year for the next 18 years Tobin would be involved in the quest for other Walter Paytons, the type of person and player he and Finks considered the ideal.
“We prided ourselves on drafting the total package,” Tobin said. “But Walter was the first, the prototype, numero uno, No. 1. He was committed to people and society as well as the game, and we don’t have that a lot anymore.
“And he was the greatest player I ever laid eyes on, and I graded an awful lot of them over my career. He was the very best, and I saw Jim Brown play.”
Tobin first saw Payton standing in street clothes on the sideline of a summer 1974 all-star game being played in Lubbock, Texas. The NFL was concerned about a start-up league trying to sign juniors, something the NFL did not permit at the time, and the push was on to keep the new league from getting Payton in particular.
Someone pointed out “that Payton kid from Jackson State” to Tobin. “You could see even then he was built like a Greek god,” Tobin recalled.
But Payton’s greatness went beyond his numbers on the field. It lay in how he (downplayed) his accomplishments and how he affected those with whom he came in contact. He was, Tobin said, the type of person who reached across racial and religious lines, to rich and poor. He was the same to everyone.
“He was a `rules’ kid; I was a rules kid,” Tobin said. “We talked about our upbringing: fishing, hunting, swimming in creeks where we weren’t supposed to be, trying to sneak in the back door, living on a farm. He never hung his head, never looked for excuses. Walter meant a lot to the sport, to the city. Everybody identifies him, as they do (Mike) Singletary and some others, as a Chicago Bear.
“He was one of God’s own, and I guess God needed him up there.”