Most football historians consider Dick Butkus to be the greatest middle linebacker ever to play the game.
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Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 9, 1942, Richard Marvin Butkus entered the world weighing a robust 13 pounds 6 ounces. The son of a Lithuanian immigrant father who spoke broken English and worked for the Pullman-Standard railroad company as an electrician and an American-born mother who worked 50 hours a week at a laundromat, Butkus grew up on the city’s South Side hoping to one day play for his favorite NFL team, the Chicago Cardinals. In pursuit of his dream, Butkus elected to enroll at perennial football winner Chicago Vocational High School, rather than attend the school closest to where he lived.
Emerging as one of the area’s most highly touted prospects under the tutelage of head coach Bernie O’Brien while at Vocational High, Butkus starred at fullback and linebacker, gaining recognition from the Chicago Sun-Times as Chicago’s high school player of the year as a junior in 1959 by averaging 5 yards per carry on offense, while also making 70 percent of his team’s tackles on defense. Choosing to remain close to home following his graduation, Butkus accepted an athletic scholarship from the University of Illinois, where he continued to star on the gridiron. Excelling at center and linebacker for the Fighting Illini from 1962 to 1964, Butkus earned All–Big Ten Conference honors as a sophomore, before being named First-Team All-America in each of the next two seasons. Butkus, who built up his strength by carrying cases of tile for hours on end in his summer job and pushing cars with the motor off on a dead-end street in his neighborhood, recorded 145 tackles and forced 10 fumbles as a junior, prompting Dan Jenkins to write in Sports Illustrated, “If every college football team had a linebacker like Dick Butkus, all fullbacks would soon be three feet tall and sing soprano. Dick Butkus is a special kind of brute whose particular talent is mashing runners into curious shapes. . . . Butkus not only hits, he crushes and squeezes opponents with thick arms that also are extremely long. At any starting point on his build, he is big, well-proportioned, and getting bigger.” Performing brilliantly once again as a senior in 1964, Butkus recorded 132 tackles, en route to earning a third-place finish in the Heisman Trophy balloting and being named college football’s Lineman of the Year and Player of the Year by both the Sporting News and the American Football Coaches Association.
Subsequently selected by the Denver Broncos with the ninth overall pick of the 1965 AFL Draft and the Chicago Bears with the third overall pick of that year’s NFL Draft, Butkus chose to sign with George Halas and the hometown Bears even though the Broncos offered him more money. Making an extremely favorable impression on veteran middle linebacker Bill George once he arrived at his first pro training camp, Butkus drew praise from the future Hall of Famer, who later said, “The second I saw him on the field, I knew my playing days were over. Nobody ever looked that good before or since.”
After beating out George for the starting middle linebacker job during the preseason, Butkus went on to perform magnificently as a rookie, earning Pro Bowl honors for the first of eight straight times and the first of his five First-Team All-Pro selections by leading the Bears with five interceptions, seven fumble recoveries, and well over 100 tackles, with his superb play helping them improve their record from 5-9 to 9-5. Although the Bears won only five games in 1966, Butkus had another huge year, gaining Second-Team All-Pro recognition by once again leading the team in tackles.
Already considered one of the league’s top defenders after just two seasons, the 6'3", 245-pound Butkus possessed good size and strength, superb instincts, and excellent quickness, even though he lacked elite running speed, as former Bears roommate Ed O’Bradovich acknowledged when he said, “For Dick to run a 100-yard dash, it would take him three days. But I want to tell you something. From that middle linebacker position, 20 yards this way, 20 yards that way, and 20 yards that way, nobody, I mean nobody, was quicker than he was. . . . He made a lot of interceptions. If he was told, in pass defenses, to be in a certain area, he was there. He had great hands. The man was unbelievable.”
Excelling in every aspect of the game, Butkus did an outstanding job of pursuing opposing ball-carriers all over the field, making tackles from sideline to sideline, and covering backs coming out of the backfield. However, Butkus impacted the outcomes of games with more than just his agility, ball-hawking skills, and tackling ability, with his nasty temperament, unmatched intensity, and barely controlled rage instilling fear in the hearts and minds of opposing players throughout the league. In explaining some of the psychological techniques he employed to work himself into a lather prior to the start of a contest, Butkus said, “When I went out on the field to warm up, I would manufacture things to make me mad. If someone on the other team was laughing, I’d pretend he was laughing at me or the Bears. It always worked for me.”
Frightening his opponents with verbal threats and grunting sounds that often made them think he had animalistic tendencies, Butkus made a lasting impression on former Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini, who, years after his first encounter with the Bears middle linebacker, still seemed astonished by his behavior, recalling, “He [Butkus] is calling me everything in the book. He’s threatening to kill me. He’s threatening to kill my children. He’s threatening to kill my mother and father. He’s threatening to kill everybody!”
In explaining the method to his madness, Butkus stated, “If you can get someone who you’re competing against either fearful or intimidated, it’s going to make my job easier. For some reason, I was able to do that. Fear is lacking confidence, and I don’t want people who I’m playing against to have confidence that they can beat me. So, let me try to make them fearful of me, not confident with me.”
Revealing that Butkus did an outstanding job of accomplishing his goal, former Baltimore Colts running back Alex Hawkins admitted, “It was horrifying playing against him because he could intimidate literally an entire offensive team, and I mean good teams.”
Suggesting that Butkus intimidated more than just the opposition, Bill Curry claimed, “Butkus dominated the game the way no other player ever has. He dominated officials. He’d take the ball away from the guy after the play and shake it in the official’s face, and the official would point it their way. It was awesome.”
Packers Hall of Fame halfback Paul Hornung said of his frequent foe, “He was the meanest S.O.B. I’ve ever seen in my life who played professional football. He didn’t like anybody with a different jersey. I mean, he really disliked you. He went after you like he hated you from his old neighborhood.”
Rams All-Pro defensive end Deacon Jones added, “He [Butkus] was an animal, and every time he hit you, he tried to put you in the cemetery.”
Meanwhile, longtime Bears teammate Doug Buffone stated, “I always say to play professional football you have to have a Neanderthal gene. Dick had two.”
Butkus, who led the Bears in tackles eight straight times, employed an unconventional tackling style that proved to be extremely successful. Instead of targeting his opponents’ legs, he typically engulfed them in his viselike grip, picked them up, and slammed them to the ground, resulting in an inordinate number of fumbles. In discussing his technique, Butkus said, “When you are in a bearhug, it’s hard to get your arms out to break your fall. And sometimes, you’re going to be trying to break your fall with an arm that happens to be carrying the ball, and the ball pops out.”
Commenting on the unusual manner with which Butkus brought down opposing ball-carriers, Colts Hall of Fame wide receiver Raymond Berry stated, “He was the most unique defensive player I ever saw come into professional football. The first year that he began to play, he began to do things to runners that no one had ever done before, in that he was tackling these guys with one hand and stripping them of the ball with the other. I’d never seen any linebacker in professional football, before or since, who did this.”
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