newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A biography of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman is not being reviewed well by ex-coach Mike Ditka and former Chicago Bears teammates.

“Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton,” which becomes available Tuesday, October 4, alleges that the late Bears Hall-of-Famer abused pain-killers and nitrous oxide, considered suicide and had affairs and fathered a child outside his marriage.

Payton died of bile duct cancer at age 45 in 1999. “If you're going to wait 12 years after somebody's passed, this is the sign of a gutless individual,” Ditka said, according to the Washington Post.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that a statement was released by “Connie Payton and family, which read: “Walter, like all of us, wasn’t perfect. The challenges he faced were well known. He was a great father to Jarrett and Brittney and held a special place in the football world and the Chicago community. Recent disclosures – some true, some untrue – do not change this. I’m saddened that anyone would attempt to profit from stories, many told by people with little credibility.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, former Chicago Bears kicker and Walter Payton teammate Kevin Butler said that some of Payton’s post-football behavior sounds like someone afflicted with a degenerative brain disease. Another former Bear, Dave Duerson, committed suicide last year, and showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in his brain.

Butler was still standing by his former teammate. “I would say, ‘why?’ ” Butler said. “What were you trying to accomplish?”