Payton and Brees, стр. 10
From early on, Payton knew exactly what he wanted to do in life. He might not have been the most disciplined student at Naperville Central High School, but he had a clear sense of purpose in life. Don Zedrow, his eighth-grade teacher at Lincoln Junior High School, remembers telling the young, cocky Payton in shop class that if he didn’t stop goofing around, he’d never amount to anything.
“I kid you not, he looked at me and said, ‘Mr. Zedrow, I’m going to be a professional football player,’” Zedrow told the Chicago Tribune in 2007. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.’”
Payton derived his early sense of direction from J.R. Bishop, his high school coach at Naperville Central High School, where Payton was a star quarterback. Bishop arrived at Naperville Central during Payton’s sophomore year to reverse the football fortunes of the public high school in the Chicago suburb that had not experienced much success.
Bishop was an early mentor for Payton. He was the head coach at Wheaton (Illinois) College from 1982 to 1995, where he compiled a stellar 84–43–1 record. In semi-retirement, he served another decade as offensive coordinator and was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2004.
“He was a father figure to me and was very important in my development,” Payton said. “I think that with myself, and a lot of other players, he probably stimulated our interest. When I got to high school, I think I was just aspiring to fit in. I always enjoyed sports, played basketball, football, baseball. I think the thing he did was he had a way of making sure you knew if you wanted to play football past high school, there probably was a college for everybody. He used to say that. I think six or seven guys went on to play college football, some major college, some Division III level. I think some of [my interest] was stimulated by him; the interest on still wanting to play when you went to college. He had a big impact on my life early on, as well as my parents.”
Payton made an early impression on Bishop, as well, immediately identifying himself as someone with a future.
“You know, some of them just stand out,” Bishop said. “They hit you right away. Here’s someone who’s just different than everyone else because of his interest, his eagerness, his depth of the game at such a young age. He wanted to learn more. He was in my hip pocket all the time just wanting to know more. You just knew through his own work ethic he was destined to be somebody good in some area. You didn’t know at the time he was going to be a football coach, to come to the place he is right now. He had such a positive attitude. You couldn’t get him down. You could hit him over the head and he’d come back for more. I always respected him for that.”
Bishop was ahead of his time as an offensive coordinator. He ran a wide-open aerial attack on offense, built around the quarterback. And in the offseason, he conducted a popular passing camp in Franklin, Indiana, which was an early forerunner to today’s 7-on-7 competitions.
Repeatedly, Bishop said, Payton would surprise him with his grasp of the intricacies of the game. He quickly became Bishop’s eager pupil and spent hours watching game film and studying the playbook. By the time Payton was a senior, the All-DuPage Valley Conference quarterback was helping finalize game plans and calling his own plays.
“He was one of those young men you could tell was something good,” Bishop said. “He was always willing to try things and was one of the few players I’ve coached through the years that when he talked to me, I listened.… As a coach, I didn’t always do what he said. But when he said something, I knew he thought it out, and he knew what he was talking about.”
Payton’s dream school was Purdue, which had a storied legacy as a producer of elite quarterbacks, among them Bob Griese, Len Dawson, Gary Danielson, and Mike Phipps. But the Boilermakers showed no interest, and Payton picked Eastern Illinois over offers from Southern Illinois, Northern Illinois, and Southwest Missouri State. At EIU, Payton set several passing records for Coach Al Molde’s high-powered passing attack, which was nicknamed Eastern Airlines. Payton had passing games of 461 and 509 yards, the latter a school record, and eventually topped the 10,000-yard passing mark in his career. He recorded 20 300-yard passing games and set 11 school records, before they were eventually broken by Tony Romo and Jimmy Garoppolo.
“Sean was an intense competitor, an infectious leader, and one of the most confident players I had the pleasure of working with in my career,” Molde later told the Chicago Tribune. “He was a player who loved watching film and preparing for the next game.… So many times he would check into a play at the line [of scrimmage], drop back, and throw a strike to one of our receivers for big gains and touchdowns.”
Despite his impressive résumé, Payton wasn’t selected in the 1987 NFL Draft. He tried out for the Kansas City Chiefs that spring but wasn’t offered a contract. There wasn’t much demand for a 5’11”, 180-pound quarterback from a Division I-AA program.
Over the next 18 months, his professional playing career took him to three different leagues in three different countries. He started in the Arena Football League for the Chicago Bruisers and Pittsburgh Gladiators and then went to the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League. After being cut by Ottawa, he played briefly as a replacement player for the Chicago Bears during the 1987 player strike. Payton started three games for the Bears, who were coached by Mike Ditka. He won the first two