In his eight seasons with the Chicago Bears, he was a powerful hitter against the run and a quick stopper on pass plays. He later pursued acting. Dick Butkus, the Chicago Bears’ famously hard-hitting Hall of Fame middle linebacker of the 1960s and 1970s and a member of the NFL’s 100th anniversary all-time squad, died on Thursday at his home in Malibu, California. He was eighty.
The Bears confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
Butkus, at 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, was a terrific size for his period and stuffed rushing plays up the middle. He was also quick and mobile enough to drop back and intercept opponents’ passes.
He was named a first-team All-Pro five times and made eight Pro Bowl appearances. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, therefore the number of times Butkus smothered rival quarterbacks is unknown. However, he was thought to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing with the Bears from 1965 to 1973.
“When I went out on the field to warm up, I would make things to make me mad,” Butkus told the Hall of Fame. “If someone from the opposing team was laughing, I’d assume he was laughing at me or the Bears. It “It always worked for me.” Bill George, Butkus’ predecessor as the Bears’ middle linebacker, was nearing the conclusion of his own Hall of Fame career when Butkus was a rookie and thought he was bound for success. “The first time I saw Butkus, I started packing my gear,” George once told The Chicago Tribune. “There was no way that guy wasn’t going to be great.” Until the early 1950s, players in the center of professional defensive lines were referred to as middle guards. They were large individuals tasked mostly with preventing opponents’ inside running games. George began altering defenses by dropping back occasionally for potential throw plays.
The middle linebacker position was glamorized in October 1960, when CBS aired “The Violent World of Sam Huff,” narrated by Walter Cronkite and featuring the Giants’ star. Butkus was then a fullback, linebacker, punter, and placekicker for Chicago Vocational High School.
He achieved national recognition as an All-American while playing linebacker and center for the University of Illinois over three seasons. He led the Illini to an 8-1-1 record as a junior, including a Rose Bowl victory over the University of Washington on New Year’s Day in 1964.
Richard Marvin Butkus was born into a large Lithuanian-American family in Chicago on Dec. 9, 1942, a son of John and Emma (Good-off) Butkus. His father was an electrician for the Pullman-Standard railroad car company.
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Butkus was chosen by the Bears in the first round, third overall, in the 1965 N.F.L. draft and by the Denver Broncos of the American Football League in its second round. He went with his hometown team, a storied N.F.L. franchise owned and coached by the Hall of Famer George Halas. In his rookie season, he intercepted five passes and recovered seven fumbles.
But the Bears fell on hard times during Butkus’s years. They won 49 games, lost 74, tied four and never reached the playoffs. In his last few seasons, Butkus played on with a badly injured right knee despite having undergone surgery. In May 1974, having retired, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending that the team had not provided him with the medical and hospital care it had promised in a five-year contract he signed in July 1973. The case was settled out of court. Upon leaving football, Butkus pursued acting. In one of a series of Miller Lite television advertisement featuring athletes, he portrayed a tennis player who debated the beer’s strongest point with Bubba Smith, formerly a star defensive end with the Baltimore Colts. The point of contention in the series was always: “Tastes Great! Less Filling!”
Butkus appeared in several films, including “Any Given Sunday” (1999) and “Necessary Roughness” (1991). He has appeared in television productions such as “My Two Dads” and “Hang Time.”
Butkus played himself in “Brian’s Song,” a 1971 television documentary honoring his teammate Brian Piccolo, a running back who died of cancer the previous year. He also appeared in the ESPN series “Bound for Glory,” which followed him for a season as a high school football coach.
He is survived by his wife, Helen; their three children, Matt, Nikki, and Richard Jr.; and grandchildren.
Mike Pyle, the Bears’ center in the 1960s, battled Butkus head-on during scrimmages. In Richard Whittingham’s “Bears in Their Own Words” (1991), Pyle stated that “Dick would be just as intense in practice as he was in a game.”
“I’d spend all this money buying him dinner and beer and stuff like that so that he wouldn’t take it out on me in the scrimmages,” Pyle recalled. “He probably did shorten my career by a couple of years just in training camp.”
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