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For eight years, Matt Suhey’s job was to run into people so his best friend didn’t have to.
Suhey was a fullback for the Chicago Bears. In American football, that is the player who lines up just in front of the star runner and, when the play starts, charges ahead to knock defenders out of the way. If he does it well, almost nobody notices him. They notice the runner.
The runner, for most of Suhey’s career, was Walter Payton, one of the greatest players the game has ever had. Suhey cleared the path. Payton got the headlines. That was the deal, and by every account Suhey was fine with it.
Matt Suhey died on Sunday, 6 September 2026. He was 68. The cause has not been made public. And most of the tributes since have been less about the hits he took on the field than about what he did in the 27 years after Payton died.
Payton’s son Jarrett put it in one line: “My dad left him in charge and Matt never let that responsibility sit lightly.”
Who Was Matt Suhey?
He came from what is often called the “first family” of Penn State football. His father, Steve Suhey, is in the College Football Hall of Fame. His grandfather, Bob Higgins, played for and later coached the school. Matt followed them there, and the Bears picked him in the second round of the 1980 draft.
He played all ten of his professional seasons in Chicago: 148 games, 100 of them as a starter. He blocked for Payton for eight of those seasons, until Payton retired after 1987. In January 1986 he scored the very first touchdown of the Bears’ 46-10 Super Bowl win over New England, an 11-yard run in the first quarter.
Those are good numbers. But they are not why so many people are searching his name this week.
Jarrett Payton once described Suhey’s job this way, in the NFL Network documentary A Football Life: “Matt watched my dad’s back, kind of like being a bodyguard or protector. He blocked for him. He took a lot of hits, making sure that my dad would get the glory, and Matt kind of just sat back in the background, very unselfish.”
Hold on to that last word. It turns out to describe the whole second half of his life.
Walter Payton Didn’t Like Him at First
Here is the part of the story that gets left out of most obituaries.
When Suhey arrived in 1980, Payton already had a best friend in the backfield. His name was Roland Harper. The two had started their careers together, and Harper had been clearing Payton’s path for four years. But Harper was coming back from a serious knee injury, and the team drafted Suhey.
Payton did not take it well.
“[Payton] completely viewed it as me coming in and taking his buddy’s spot,” Suhey told ESPN’s Melissa Isaacson in 2010. “He was very loyal to his guys and no question, he didn’t particularly care for me.” Payton even had a nickname for the new kid: “the short, white guy.”
Think about that for a second. The man Walter Payton would one day trust with his children started out as the man Payton resented. And the reason he resented him was loyalty. Loyalty to a different friend.
That is not a flaw in the story. It is a clue. Payton was the kind of person who stuck with his people. He just didn’t know yet that Suhey was going to become one of them.
How a Dropped Ball Started a Friendship
The change came, strangely, from two mistakes.
In the first game of Suhey’s second season, he fumbled (he lost hold of the ball) about 30 seconds in. The Bears lost a game they could have won. The next week, Payton fumbled in almost the same situation, and they lost again.
After the flight home that night, Suhey was heading out to get something to eat with a teammate. “Walter asked me where I was going and said, ‘I’ll come along,'” Suhey remembered, “and from that point on, we had a great relationship.”
That’s it. No big speech. Two people who had each just let the team down, going to get food together.
They came from very different worlds. Payton grew up in Columbia, Mississippi. Suhey grew up in a university town in Pennsylvania. In his autobiography, Never Die Easy, Payton wrote: “We were Ebony and Ivory before Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney.” Payton’s wife, Connie, said her husband saw in Suhey “a quiet gentle spirit,” and put it simply: “Everybody needs someone who they know understands them and doesn’t judge them, who’s there for them unconditionally.”
When Suhey’s youngest son, Scott, was born on 4 March 1994 (written 3-4-94 in America) at 10:34 in the morning, Payton, whose shirt number was 34, heard those numbers and announced that he was the godfather. Suhey said they’d be honoured.
Matt Suhey and Walter Payton’s Last Year
Payton became ill in the middle of 1998. In February 1999 he told the public he had a rare liver disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis. He later developed bile duct cancer, and he died on 1 November 1999. He was 45.
Even a decade later, Suhey found those months hard to talk about. “That was such a very, very difficult time for everybody,” he said in 2010. “I can’t tell you how difficult it was.”
But other people could describe what he did.
He went with Payton to his first appointments at the Mayo Clinic, at a time when Payton didn’t want his own family to be burdened. He became the go-between, passing medical news to old teammates and passing their messages back. Connie Payton remembered him showing up on days when her husband only wanted to sleep, putting him in the car with a “Come on, you’re going to get up,” and taking him for a drive.
He also kept him laughing. Payton wrote about joking with Suhey that in Brian’s Song, an old film about two teammates, “the white guy gets sick and dies. I said I wondered how come I couldn’t have been in that movie.” Then: “Matt helped me laugh and after I got sick, I needed that more than ever.”
And Suhey never turned his friend into a saint. “Walter wasn’t perfect by any stretch; he was moody at times,” he said. “But he was a great football player and a great guy who took care of his family.” You can only talk about someone that honestly if you really knew them.
Payton’s daughter summed up those final weeks: “Matt was always around on those final days, days when my dad didn’t want anyone else around but family, because Matt was family.”
“My Dad Left Him in Charge”
When Payton died, Suhey became the executor of his will, the person responsible for sorting out everything someone leaves behind. He also became the keeper of Payton’s name and image.
That is a big job for any family. Payton’s estate was large and complicated. Teammate Emery Moorehead said something about it that is easy to read past: “I don’t even know if he took time to grieve himself.”
But the paperwork was the smaller part. The bigger part was the family.
Payton’s two children were teenagers when their father got sick. “He really trusted Matt, knowing he wasn’t going to be around much longer, by putting our family in his hands,” Payton’s daughter said. “He allowed my mom and my brother and I to go on with life as we knew it. And especially when my dad first passed away, he allowed us to grieve without worrying about anything else.”
Connie Payton said the family joked that Matt could be “a little tight with the money.” When the kids asked for something, he’d tell them, “No, not yet, you don’t need that,” the way he thought Walter would have said it. He checked on their grades, and later on their jobs. He asked the daughter’s boyfriends pointed questions. And at Jarrett’s wedding, it was Suhey who walked Connie down the aisle.
This week, Jarrett wrote: “After we lost my dad in 1999, Matt became the biggest father figure I had.” And: “He protected our family. He looked after us. He made sure we were okay.”
Most people show up for a funeral. Far fewer show up in month four, or year four, which is exactly when a grieving family needs them most. (That quiet drop-off is a big part of what to say to someone who is grieving.) Suhey showed up for 27 years.
The Rarest Kind of Loyalty
There is a kind of loyalty that is easy. It’s the kind you give to someone who is right in front of you, who can thank you, who might return the favour.
And there is a harder kind: loyalty to someone who is gone. Walter Payton never saw a single thing Matt Suhey did for his family after 1999. He never got to say thanks. Nobody was checking. Suhey could have signed the papers, sent flowers every year, and still been remembered as a very good friend. Instead he kept showing up for the people his friend had loved.
That shape is very old. There is a story, around three thousand years old, about a king named David whose closest friend, Jonathan, was killed in battle. Years later, with his throne secure and nobody asking him to, David went looking for anyone left from Jonathan’s family, so he could be kind to them for his friend’s sake. He found Jonathan’s son and gave him a permanent seat at his own table. (That son’s side of the story is worth reading on its own.)
The people who first told that story weren’t only praising a loyal king. They were pointing at what they believed God is like: a faithfulness that keeps its promise even when the person it was made to can no longer see it being kept.
Whatever you make of that, it is hard to look at a life like Suhey’s and not recognise it.
How to Be Someone’s Matt Suhey
You don’t need to be famous, or rich, or anyone’s executor to do what he did. Most of it was small, repeated for a long time.
- Keep going after the funeral. If someone you know lost a person this year, set a reminder on your phone for three months from now, and another for the anniversary. Send one line: “Thinking about you and them today.”
- Offer the ride. Suhey drove his friend to appointments and got him out of the house when he didn’t want to get up. Being the one who shows up, or simply walks with someone to the clinic, is worth more than any speech.
- Tell the truth about the people you’ve lost. “Walter wasn’t perfect by any stretch” was part of how Suhey honoured his friend. Loving someone honestly is still loving them.
- If you’re the one left in charge, check on yourself too. Moorehead wondered whether Suhey ever had time to grieve. If you are carrying someone else’s family right now, this short Am I Burned Out From Caregiving? check can help you see how much you’re holding.
Matt Suhey spent his career making sure someone else got the glory. Then he spent the rest of his life making sure that same man’s family was never alone. The first job ended in 1989. The second one never did.
A Question Worth Discussing
Which do you think takes more character: taking the hits so a friend gets the credit, or keeping a promise to a friend for decades after they’re gone and can never know? Tell us which one you’d pick, and why, in the comments.
Share This
- Matt Suhey blocked for Walter Payton for eight years so Payton could get the glory. When Payton died, Suhey looked after his family for the next 27. Some friendships don’t end at the funeral. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/relationships-and-family/matt-suhey-walter-payton-left-in-charge/
- Walter Payton didn’t even like Matt Suhey at first. He thought Suhey had taken his friend’s spot. Nineteen years later, Payton put his whole family in Suhey’s hands. This one got me: https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/relationships-and-family/matt-suhey-walter-payton-left-in-charge/
- Most people show up for the funeral. Matt Suhey showed up for 27 years. This is what loyalty looks like when nobody is checking. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/relationships-and-family/matt-suhey-walter-payton-left-in-charge/
Questions People Ask About Matt Suhey
Who was Matt Suhey?
Matt Suhey was an American football fullback who played ten seasons (1980 to 1989) for the Chicago Bears after starring at Penn State. He was the lead blocker for Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton for eight seasons and scored the first touchdown of the Bears’ Super Bowl XX win in January 1986. After Payton died in 1999, Suhey served as executor of Payton’s estate and became a father figure to Payton’s children. Matt Suhey died on 6 September 2026, aged 68.
How did Matt Suhey die?
The cause of Matt Suhey’s death has not been made public. The former Chicago Bears fullback died on Sunday, 6 September 2026, at the age of 68, and reports of his death did not include a cause.
What was Matt Suhey’s relationship with Walter Payton?
Matt Suhey and Walter Payton were Chicago Bears teammates from 1980 to 1987 and became best friends. Suhey was Payton’s lead blocker on the field, went with him to medical appointments during his 1998 to 1999 illness, and after Payton’s death became executor of his will, keeper of his name and image, and a father figure to his son Jarrett and his daughter.
Was Walter Payton the godfather of Matt Suhey’s son?
Yes. Walter Payton was godfather to Matt Suhey’s youngest son, Scott, born on 4 March 1994. Suhey said Payton claimed the role after hearing the birth date, written 3-4-94 in the US, and the time, 10:34 in the morning, because both contained 34, Payton’s shirt number.
What happened to Walter Payton?
Walter Payton, the Chicago Bears’ Hall of Fame running back, announced in February 1999 that he had primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare disease of the liver’s bile ducts. He later developed bile duct cancer and died on 1 November 1999, at the age of 45. His close friend and former teammate Matt Suhey then became executor of his estate.
