Sweetness Quotes

“At the start of each NFL season, before games have begun and injuries have occurred and expectations fail to meet reality, optimism is an organizational requirement. As the mindless blather goes, 'Every team is 0-0' and 'With a few breaks...' and 'If everyone lives up to their potential...' It makes no difference whether your franchise is plagued by a roster of talentless dopes, whether your coach is an alcoholic and your GM a heroin addict, whether you haven't won since Washington crossed the Delaware.

This, at long last, will be the year!”
― Jeff Pearlman, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton

“Here, at Soldier Field, Walter Payton had been his absolute happiest. In his uniform, on the green turf, there were no business transactions or marital difficulties or out-of-wedlock children. Here, Peter Payton didn't die in jail and Alyne Payton didn't work three jobs. Here, Walter Payton wasn't ignored by colleges because of the blackness of his skin. There was no racism; no liver disease or bile duct cancer. He didn't have to try and come off an someone he wasn't. He could be himself. He could run free.”
― Jeff Pearlman, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton

“He taught me that when I could no longer successfully elude a tackler, I should let the man have a memory of the tackle as vivid as my own. In other words, why should I be the one who gets clobbered? As long as there are two of us in on the play, and I have been slowed by others to the point of where I can’t break away from him, he ought to take half the blow. Then it won’t hurt me so much. I enjoyed that. It made sense.... More and more often, the second time a guy came at me, he remembered that first shot he’d taken from me. If he hesitated or rolled into his tackle instead of driving into it, I had the upper hand. I’d ram right through him or over him, and suddenly it was the scared little running back scoring rather than the big brute executing a crushing tackle.”
― Jeff Pearlman, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton