A photo of Dick Butkus grinning behind his face mask filled the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 1970 NFL preview, headlined “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” Opponents who found themselves on the business end of his rattling hits could testify that this was no exaggeration.
Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, has died, the team announced Thursday. He was 80.
According to a statement from the team, Butkus’ family confirmed that he died in his sleep overnight at his home in Malibu, California.
Butkus was a five-time first-team All-Pro and made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons before a knee injury forced him to retire at age 31. He was the ultimate Monster of the Midway and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. He is still considered one of the greatest defensive players in the history of the league.
Trading on his image as the toughest guy in the room, Butkus enjoyed a long second career as a sports broadcaster, actor in films and TV series, and an in-demand pitcher for products ranging from antifreeze to beer. Whether the script called for comedy or drama, Butkus usually resorted to playing himself, often with his gruff exterior masking a softer side.
“I would never go out and intentionally hurt someone,” Butkus replied ironically when asked about his reputation on the field. “Unless, you know, it was important… like a league game or something.”
Butkus was the rare professional athlete who played close to home his entire career. He was a star linebacker, fullback and kicker at Chicago Vocational High who later went on to play at the University of Illinois. Born on December 9, 1942, the youngest of eight children, he grew up on the city’s South Side as a fan of the Chicago Cardinals, the Bears’ crosstown rivals.
But after being drafted in the first round in 1965 by both the Bears and the Denver Broncos (then a member of the now-defunct American Football League), Butkus opted to stay in Chicago and play for NFL founder and coach George Halas. The Bears also added future Hall of Famer Gayle Sayers to the roster that year with another first-round pick.
“He was the son of Chicago,” Bears chairman George McCaskey, Halas’ grandson, said in a statement. “He radiated what our great city stands for and, not coincidentally, what George Halas looked for in a player: toughness, smarts, instinct, passion and leadership. He refused to accept anything less than the best of himself or his teammates.”
Butkus inherited the middle linebacker job from Bill George, a Hall of Famer who popularized the position in the NFL. In 1954, George abandoned his three-point stance in the middle of the defensive line and started each play a few steps away, a vantage point that allowed him to watch the plays unfold and then race for the ball.
Butkus, however, brought speed, agility and a scorched earth attitude to the job that his predecessors could only imagine. He intercepted five passes, recovered six fumbles and was unofficially credited with forcing six more in his rookie year, topping it all off with the first of eight consecutive Pro Bowl appearances. But his reputation as a disruptor extended far beyond his ability to take football away.
Butkus hit runners high, wrapped them up and drove them to the ground like a rag doll. Playboy magazine once described him as “the meanest, angriest, toughest, nastiest” player in the NFL and an “animal, a wild, inhuman one.” Such descriptions never sat well with Butkus. But they were also difficult to argue with.
Several opponents claimed Butkus had stabbed them in the face or bit them in stick-ups, and he acknowledged that during warm-ups “I would make things to make me mad.” When the Detroit Lions unveiled an I formation against the Bears at the old Tigers Stadium, Butkus knocked every member of the “I” – the center, the quarterback, the fullback and the halfback – out of the game.
And he didn’t always stop there. Several times Butkus collided with ball carriers far beyond the sideline. More than once he chased them on running tracks around the field and even into the stands.
“Just hitting people wasn’t good enough,” teammate Ed O’Bradovich said. “He liked to crush people.”
Despite these efforts, the Bears lost far more games than they won during his tenure, going 48-74-4. Butkus struggled with tendon problems that started in high school, suffered a serious injury to his right knee during the 1970 season and underwent preventative surgery before the following season. He considered a second operation after being sidelined for nine games in the 1973 season.
When a surgeon asked him “how a man in your mold can play football, or why you would even want to,” Butkus announced his retirement in May 1974.
Shortly afterwards, Butkus sued the Bears for $1.6 million, claiming he received inadequate medical care and was owed the remaining four years of salary on his contract. The lawsuit was settled for $600,000, but Butkus and Halas did not speak for five years.
Butkus, like Sayers, never reached the postseason. The Bears won the 1963 championship and by the time they made the playoffs again in 1977, Butkus and Sayers were long gone.
The Bears climbed back to the top in the 1985 season with their only Super Bowl championship. But since then, they have only returned to the title game once. Butkus didn’t understand why.
“There’s no reason why we can’t or shouldn’t be on the run all the time,” he said during the Bears’ 100th anniversary celebration in June 2019. “I know you got those draft picks or whatever when you’re done first all the time. How can you explain New England being there all these years? That is not true. It must be the bears.”
After leaving football, Butkus became an instant celebrity. He appeared in The Longest Yard in 1974 and in a dozen feature films over the next fifteen years, as well as the sitcoms My Two Dads and Hang Time. He also returned to the Bears as a radio analyst in 1985, replacing Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder on CBS’s pregame show The NFL Today in 1988.
Through the Butkus Foundation, he helped start a program at a Southern California hospital to encourage early screenings to detect heart disease. He promoted a campaign to encourage high school students to exercise and eat right and avoid performance-enhancing drugs.
The foundation oversees the Butkus Award, established in 1985 to honor college football’s best linebacker. It was expanded in 2008 to include pros and high school students.
“Dick was gruff, and maybe that put some people off coming to him, but he actually had a gentle approach,” McCaskey said.
He is survived by his wife Helen and children Ricky, Matt and Nikki. Cousin Luke Butkus has coached in college and the NFL, including time with the Bears.