Dick Butkus

Most feared defender, greatest LB are only a few of legend's titles

BY NEIL HAYES
nhayes@suntimes.com
Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.suntimes.com/index.html
December 16, 2008

He wore No. 51 for the Bears, but nobody ever needed a number to identify him on the field. He had a primal, predatory gait, and he closed on opposing ball carriers like a runaway locomotive. No one was better at finishing a tackle. He would slam a running back to the ground or engulf him with his bulk, making the smaller player disappear behind his wide shoulders as if he had been swallowed whole by a man NFL Films once described as ''Moby Dick in a goldfish bowl.''

Mostly, Dick Butkus' career was defined by high-impact collisions. When he hit somebody, you could almost hear twisting metal and shattering glass.

''Football is what I am,'' he once said. ''I love the hitting.''

Butkus may have been the most feared defender in NFL history and perhaps the greatest linebacker of all-time. The South Side native, who was voted the second-greatest athlete in Chicago history by a Sun-Times panel, also was versatile enough to have excelled at any of the three linebacker spots, any position along the offensive and defensive lines as well as fullback and perhaps even tight end, ranking him among best all-around players who ever lived. In 1970, a panel of NFL coaches chose the future College and Pro Football Hall of Famer as the one player they'd choose to build a franchise around.

In the end, he's mostly remembered for the fury with which he played and the devastation it created.

''I always say, to play professional football, you have to have a neanderthal gene,'' longtime Bears linebacker Doug Buffone once told ESPN. ''Dick had two.''

Butkus was the youngest of eight children who grew up in Roseland, not far from Gately Stadium. Maybe it was because his older brothers all played football -- Ron Butkus played professionally before tearing up his knee -- that he became obsessed with being a pro football player. At a young age, he dedicated himself to achieving his goal. When he was 12, he attached straps to a broken-down motor scooter and pulled friends through the park to strengthen his legs. When he got older, he pushed an old car up and down a dead-end street to pack on more muscle. Even when he played other sports, football was on his mind.

''I used to play catcher in Little League so I could have collisions at home plate,'' Butkus once said. ''I'd run up the line as they came in and knock 'em down before they could slide. Their mothers would boo me.''

He developed into the prototypical linebacker at Vocational High School, where he made 70 percent of his team's tackles, was its leading scorer and kicked. He was the first junior named Sun-Times Player of the Year. He was an All-American after his senior year and might've gone to Notre Dame had the university allowed married students to enroll. As a high school senior, Butkus already was contemplating marriage to his sweetheart, Helen, who remains his bride to this day.

At Illinois, he became a two-time unanimous All-American and led the Illini to a No. 3 ranking and a 17-7 victory over Washington in the 1964 Rose Bowl. Butkus was named Player of the Year by the Football Coaches' Association and finished third in Heisman voting.

''Before he's through,'' ex-Illinois coach Pete Elliott predicted, ''he'll be the greatest linebacker anybody ever saw.''

Butkus was named Rookie of the Year and All-Pro after being a first-round selection of the Bears. He would terrorize opponents for nine seasons before his knee gave out. Former Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi, then working for Baltimore, remembers walking into a training room littered with injured players after one Bears-Colts game. The Baltimore trainer shrugged and offered a one-word explanation: ''Butkus.''

Those same Colts were on their way to the airport after another bruising game against the Bears when the team bus was rear-ended at a stoplight. ''There's Butkus again,'' one of the players said.

''I don't need cheap shots,'' Butkus once told the Sun-Times.

He was named All-NFL seven times and went to the Pro Bowl after each of his first eight seasons. He recovered a then-NFL record 27 fumbles and intercepted 22 passes, giving him an amazing 49 takeaways during a career that produced individual greatness but only two winning seasons.

''I've been away from the game for 30 years, and people still talk about me and recognize me,'' said Butkus, who now campaigns against steroid use.

''I don't know what I did to deserve that. A lot of people have played the game, a lot of great ones. I must have made some kind of impression. It's amazing that people remember.''