Dick Butkus, the Chicago Bears’ famously hard-hitting Hall of Fame middle linebacker of the 1960s and ’70s and a selection for the N.F.L.’s 100th anniversary all-time team, died at his home on Thursday in Malibu, Calif. He was 80.
The Bears confirmed the deatht saying he had died “overnight.” No cause was provided.
At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, good size for his era, Butkus stuffed running plays up the middle. He was also speedy and mobile enough to drop back and foil opponents’ pass plays. He was cited as a first-team All-Pro five times and was chosen for the Pro Bowl game eight times. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, so the number of times Butkus smothered opposing quarterbacks remains unrecorded. But he was considered to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing for the Bears from 1965 to 1973.
“When I went out on the field to warm up, I would manufacture things to make me mad,” Butkus was quoted as saying by the Hall of Fame. “If someone on the other team was laughing, I’d pretend he was laughing at me or the Bears. It always worked for me.”
Bill George, Butkus’s predecessor as the Bears’ middle linebacker, who was nearing the end of his own Hall of Fame career when Butkus was a rookie, believed he was destined for stardom. “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 middle of pro defensive lines were known as middle guards. They were hefty sorts charged mainly with stopping opponents’ inside running games. George began transforming defenses by dropping back at times for prospective pass plays.
The middle linebacker position was glamorized in October 1960 when CBS aired “The Violent World of Sam Huff,” narrated by Walter Cronkite, a portrayal…