Dick Butkus played for the Bears from 1965-73, making seven Pro Bowl teams. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Butkus died Thursday at age 80. TNS
In Chicago, where everyone likes to think of themselves as tough, Dick Butkus was the real deal.
The Chicago Bears’ linebacking great, who died Thursday at 80, was considered the toughest guy in a sport in which hitting is not optional.
He carried that persona into his post-football life, cashing in on that demeanor in movies and TV, and even bringing it to the social media site formerly called Twitter. When Butkus’ account finally was verified in January 2022, he began trolling Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers the day after a Packers playoff loss, writing “Funny, the orange juice tastes a little bit sweeter this morning.”
That was why Butkus was still beloved in Chicago decades after his Bears days as a human sledgehammer with a crew cut ended. He never felt the need to be anyone but himself, and that was good enough for us. He later joked about his reputation for creating mayhem.
“I’m not so mean,” Butkus told Chicago Tribune reporter Cooper Rollow. “I wouldn’t ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately. Unless it was, you know, important – like a league game or something.”
But sometimes the reputation hurt him, when his hard hitting was misconstrued as dirty. He wrote about one such moment in his 1972 book “Dick Butkus, Stop-Action.” After the death on the field of Lions receiver Chuck Hughes during a Bears game in Detroit in 1971, Butkus wrote he picked up a magazine that had a quote from Lions middle linebacker Mike Lucci: “Something ought to be done about Butkus. He intentionally tries to hurt people, and that’s wrong.”
Hughes had died of a heart attack, not from any hit during the game from Butkus. But the labeling of him as a dirty player by the Lions was something he could not let go, and he didn’t hold back in his criticism.
“No one but those jerks has ever called me a dirty player,” he wrote of the Lions. “I play as hard as I can. I try to hit as hard as I can. To me that’s what the game is all about.”
Butkus played the game the right way, even as his bone-crunching hits sounded a little louder than anyone else’s. He considered himself the best at his position when he played and wrote in his book, “it annoys me when someone says that anyone is as good or better than me. Call it ego if you want, but it just isn’t true.”
Butkus, a Chicago product who starred at the University of Illinois, came up in the same draft as fellow Bears great Gale Sayers, making for one of the greatest duos in Chicago sports history. Butkus was selected to the All-NFL team seven times during his nine-year career, and who knows how much bigger the legend would be had it not been cut short by injuries.
NFL defensive and offensive rookies of the year, Dick Butkus, left, and Gale Sayers on Dec. 16, 1965. TNS photo
A lawsuit Butkus filed against the Bears and Dr. Ted Fox because of the damage he received eventually was settled, but the feud between the greatest defensive player in franchise history and owner George Halas lasted for years.
Butkus was back in the family’s good graces by the time Mike Ditka was hired as coach, and was made part of the radio broadcast team. Butkus’ most memorable call was during the 1985 NFC title game against the Los Angeles Rams, when he feverishly yelled encouragement to Wilber Marshall as the Bears’ linebacker scooped up a fourth-quarter fumble and rambled 53 yards for a touchdown.
“Go … go … go!”
Butkus’ former Bears teammate and current WGN-AM analyst Ed O’Bradovich broke down Thursday night on the Bears’ pregame show when talking about the death of a friend he knew since they were teenagers on the South Side. In a 1994 Tribune interview, O’Bradovich said they used to put a car in the middle of a dead-end street and “push it back and forth, up and down the street.”
When they reunited as Bears teammates, they practiced as hard as they played during games.
“I remember Gale would juke and fake and run 30 or 40 yards on dummy runs in practice, going through the line at full speed,” O’Bradovich said. “You know that old adage: ‘Play the way you practice?’ Well, Dick used to hit those tackling dummies like he wanted to break them in two and spit ‘em out.”
Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus (51) smothers Detroit Lions running back Steve Owens during a 1971 game with help from defender Joe Taylor. AP file photo
Bill George, also a Hall of Fame linebacker for the Bears, told Rollow of the first time he saw Butkus in July 1965 at the first practice at camp in Rensselaer, Indiana.
“I started packing my gear,” George said. “I knew my Bear days were numbered. There was no way that guy wasn’t going to be great.”
George called it. Butkus turned into the best linebacker of his era and arguably the best of all time. The Bears finally got around to retiring his No. 51, along with Sayers’ No. 40, on a rainy Halloween night in 1994 at Soldier Field.
Butkus’ NFL legacy was sealed years ago. But in Chicago, he was more than just a football player. In his hometown, Butkus will always be the embodiment of the Chicago Way.
Tough, funny and full of life.
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