#11

 

DICK BUTKUS

It had the look of a grudge match. When Dick Butkus was drafted by George Halas in the first round of the 1965 draft—the same round that he also selected Gale Sayers—the Chicago Bears already had a Hall of Fame middle linebacker on their roster by the name of Bill George. While George was nearing the end of his career, he truly was an old bear who was being backed into the corner by the young phenom from the University of Illinois.

Most expected George to put on a fearsome display in order to impress Halas and show the rookie he was not about to go easily. For his part, Butkus thought he had hurt his own chances of winning the Bears’ starting middle linebacker job by practicing with the college All-Stars as they prepared to play the defending NFL champion Cleveland Browns in an exhibition prior to the start of the season. But from the minute Butkus came into camp, his intensity set him apart and he thoroughly impressed George.

“He came into camp and started playing hard and dominating,” George recalled. “It took me about two practices to realize that I was going to be packing my gear. There was no way that Dick Butkus was not going to be great. He was too fast, too smart, too athletic, and too mean. Nobody could block him. Nobody could slow him down.”

In a game dominated by the most violent of athletes, Butkus brought the violence to a new level and perhaps one that has never been surpassed. Butkus was an intimidator who would just as soon send a running back to the hospital as tackle him. A healthy Dick Butkus wanted to impose his will on everyone on the field. That included his own teammates.

Perhaps no Bears player knew what made Dick Butkus tick more than his longtime teammate Doug Buffone. An outstanding player in his own right, Buffone played outside linebacker while Butkus was manning the middle for the Bears. “Dick was not always an easy guy to play with,” Buffone explained. “He wanted things done his way, but more than that he wanted to succeed. If the offense had a play that gained yards, got a first down, or God forbid resulted in a touchdown, Dick wanted answers. He wanted to know how we could allow something like that to happen. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong and he wanted to know who was responsible. We always knew he was right. He was a guy who was not about to let any opportunity slip through his grasp and he was not going to be the player who let us down.”

Butkus played in an era before stats on tackles were kept with any regularity. However, according to unofficial counts kept by the Bears, Butkus averaged 120 tackles and 58 assists over the first eight years of his career. He also had a career-high 18 sacks during the 1967 season, a shockingly high total for a middle linebacker.

More than tackles, Butkus used his strength and athletic ability to take the ball away from his opponents. He forced 47 turnovers during his nine-year career, including 22 interceptions. He could mug you and take your lunch money but he could also dance once he made an interception. The NFL did not keep stats on forced fumbles during Butkus’s tenure but if they had, he would have led the league most seasons he was healthy.

Butkus was a first-team All-Pro in seven of his nine seasons. Playing at the same time as Ray Nitschke of the Green Bay Packers, Lee Roy Jordan of the Dallas Cowboys, and Tommy Nobis of the Atlanta Falcons only underscores how dominant Butkus was. All were great players and Nitschke may have been almost as nasty as Butkus, but none could cover the ground that Butkus could when he had a full head of steam.

As tough as he was, Butkus played the game without developing a reputation for dirty play. He may have stormed, stomped, spit, and intimidated, but he did not eye gouge, kick, or otherwise try to maim players when he tackled. “That was not the way I was going to play,” Butkus said. “If you were scared I was going to hurt you, that’s one thing. But I was not going to try to do something to a player that went outside the rules.”

Butkus’s mean streak on the field was something he worked carefully to bring out in his personality and then project to his opponents. “I would always find something to get mad at on game day,” Butkus said. “It helped me play my best game. I would look at the other side and maybe I just despised the uniform I was looking at. Or I would see someone on the other team laughing or joking. I would think they were laughing at me or the Bears. That made me angry.”

In a game in which players want to prove who is toughest and meanest, Butkus was the hands-down winner nearly every time he took the field. MacArthur Lane was a solid running back for the St. Louis Cardinals when Butkus played for the Bears and he remembers seeing an individual who seemed to be built differently than any other player.

“All I ever thought about when I was on the field at the same time as Butkus was being able to get up after he hit me,” Lane said. “That’s how tough he was and that’s the kind of player he was. He hit harder than any man I was ever tackled by.”

Butkus’s brilliant career ended after knee and leg injuries prevented him from playing without excruciating pain. Butkus had dealt with the pain throughout his career, but by the 1973 season he could no longer run more than a few steps without searing pain running up and down his leg. He eventually received a settlement from the Bears for the way his leg injury was handled by the team’s doctors. But the slow and limping Butkus at the end of his career bore no resemblance to the angry Bear that had dominated the Chicago defense for nearly a decade.