> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.grumpybuck.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # On This Date: Walter Payton Broke the All-Time Touchdown Record, and the Front Page Led With the Strike (Sept. 20, 1987) - URL: https://www.grumpybuck.com/on-this-date-walter-payton-broke-the-all-time-touchdown-record-and-the-front-page-led-with-the-strike-sept-20-1987/ - Published: 2026-09-20T23:25:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-20T23:25:24.000Z - Description: Sept. 20, 1987: Walter Payton scored his 107th rushing touchdown and passed Jim Brown. He gained 24 yards that day, his replacement gained 117, and the Chicago Tribune led with the coming players' strike. - Author: Brad Riddell - Tags: Sports History, On This Date, Football, NFL ![Payton, airborne over Detroit. He carried the ball more times than anyone in the history of the sport.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Walter-Payton-IV.jpg) Payton, airborne over Detroit. He carried the ball more times than anyone in the history of the sport. On this date in 1987, Walter Payton scored the **107th** rushing touchdown of his career, breaking a record Jim Brown had held since 1965\. It was a 1-yard run in the first quarter against Tampa Bay. The Bears won 20-3. Open the Chicago Tribune sports section the next morning and you will not find it. The headline is "Bears get job done." The lead column is about a labor dispute. The record — the most rushing touchdowns any human being had ever scored — is a clause in somebody else's sentence. ![Chicago Tribune, Monday, Sept. 21, 1987. Don Pierson's game story, Bernie Lincicome and Bob Verdi on the coming strike, and a photograph of Walter Payton watching from the bench.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Chicago_Tribune_1987_09_21_25.jpg) Chicago Tribune, Monday, Sept. 21, 1987\. Don Pierson's game story, Bernie Lincicome and Bob Verdi on the coming strike, and a photograph of Walter Payton watching from the bench. ## The 24-Yard Afternoon Payton went in from the 1 with 5:46 left in the first quarter. Kevin Butler kicked the extra point. That was the record. The rest of his day: **14 carries, 24 yards.** One point seven a carry. Two catches for two more yards. He added a 9-yard touchdown catch from Mike Tomczak in the fourth, so he scored twice and gained 26 yards from scrimmage doing it. The back who actually ran the ball that afternoon was Neal Anderson — 23 years old, Chicago's first-round pick in 1986, drafted for the express purpose of replacing Payton. Anderson went for **117** yards on 16 carries and scored on a 27-yard run. ![Sept. 20, 1987. The record-breaker gained 24 yards; his designated replacement gained 117.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/G01_the_day.png) Sept. 20, 1987\. The record-breaker gained 24 yards; his designated replacement gained 117. Bernie Lincicome put it plainly in the Tribune, and it is a hard thing to read: > Walter Payton is no longer a full-time player. He leaves the game on third down. On a day that Payton scored two touchdowns, one running, one catching, he seemed more an indulgence than a weapon. "They're keying on Walter," Mike Ditka explained. Lincicome wasn't buying: "No more so than on Anderson... Maybe the difference is that Anderson has Payton blocking for him." Bob Verdi, in the next column over, asked the question the whole city was circling: "Will No. 34 be Walter Payton or Walter Mitty?" ## Twenty-Two Years, Four Extra Seasons Jim Brown scored 106 rushing touchdowns in **nine** seasons and walked away at 29 to make movies. Nobody touched the number for 22 years. Payton needed **13** seasons and **3,838** carries — more than anyone in the history of the sport had taken. Brown averaged 5.2 yards a carry for his career. Payton averaged 4.4\. He didn't break the record by being better than Jim Brown. He broke it by not stopping. ![Two ways to get to the same place.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/G02_106_to_107.png) Two ways to get to the same place. Which is why it is perfect that the record play was a 1-yard dive into a pile, on an afternoon he could not run. ![Payton's 1987 Topps card — from the season itself.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Walter-Payton-I.jpg) Payton's 1987 Topps card — from the season itself. ## "Forward, Into the Void" The reason nobody wrote about the record is that the players were about to walk. The strike deadline was Tuesday, two days off. It is all over that Tribune page. Lincicome opened his column with three words — "Forward, into the void" — and filled it with Bears talking about money instead of football. Otis Wilson: "It don't make no sense. I don't want no strike. I don't want to lose money." Mike Singletary: "There is no chance that the Bears will not strike if the league strikes." Dan Hampton, already sour: "We've already got scab officiating." Neal Anderson, the 23-year-old who'd just run for 117 yards: "It's a business matter. No one wants a strike, but you have to do what you have to do." Even Don Pierson's straight game story is soaked in it. Tampa Bay, he wrote, were "Tampa Bay's local chapter in the brotherhood of football workers," who looked "more like accomplices than opponents." The officials, he said, "appeared to earn their union cards by ignoring penalties on both sides... as if to condone expressions of labor solidarity." The players struck on **Sept. 22**. Week 3 was cancelled outright. Then the owners did something nobody had tried: they played the games anyway, for three straight weeks, with replacement teams assembled out of insurance offices and construction sites. In Chicago they were called the Spare Bears. So Walter Payton set the all-time touchdown record, and the next thing that happened in the National Football League was three weeks of football played by strangers. One footnote from that same afternoon: a rookie quarterback made his NFL debut for Tampa Bay late in the fourth quarter. Vinny Testaverde, the $8 million arm, first overall pick. One completion, one sack. He would still be playing in 2007. ## The Last Season When the real players came back, Payton was 33 and finishing. He carried 146 times for **533** yards, the worst season of his life, and scored three more rushing touchdowns to stop at **110**. ![Payton takes the field at the Los Angeles Coliseum, 1987.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Walter-Payton-III.jpeg) Payton takes the field at the Los Angeles Coliseum, 1987. He retired holding the NFL record for carries, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, receptions by a running back, receiving yards by a running back, and total yards from scrimmage — **16,726** on the ground and **21,264** from scrimmage. Every one of those numbers was first, all time. ![Chicago says goodbye. Bears president Michael McCaskey presents Payton with a framed No. 34.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Walter-Payton-II.jpg) Chicago says goodbye. Bears president Michael McCaskey presents Payton with a framed No. 34. His last game was **Jan. 10, 1988**, a divisional playoff loss to Washington at Soldier Field, 21-17\. He carried 18 times for 85 yards. Everyone in the building knew what it was. ## They All Fall Marcus Allen retired after 1997 with 123 rushing touchdowns. Emmitt Smith finished with 164\. The rushing yards record held until 2002, when Smith took that one too. ![Every record on this list replaced the one above it.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/G03_ladder.png) Every record on this list replaced the one above it. Walter Payton died on **Nov. 1, 1999**. He was 45 years old. And the run that put his name at the top of the list was one yard — behind a line, into a pile, on an afternoon when he gained 24 yards all day and watched a 23-year-old do what he used to do, while the men he played with argued about whether to come to work on Tuesday. He got the record the same way he got all of it: a yard at a time, taking the hit at the end of every one. **Which record do you think will never fall? Comments below.**