Butkus maybe one of the top 5 baddest MoFos to ever strap on shoulder pads!
- Butkus
- Brown
- Taylor
- Lane
- Deacon Jones
Honorable mentions to Ray Lewis, JJ Watt and Aaron Donald.
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Dick ButkusâŠperhaps the BADDEST ASS Fighting Illini of all time!
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With a name like that, he better be a baller.
Conrad Dobler was the most feared opponent.
âOn the return trip, I made the best decision of my career,â Dobler later recalled. "I decided to return to my own style of football. In college I was a fighter, a scrapper â I didnât try to finesse anyone, I just tried to beat their heads in. When I got to St. Louis the first time, I changed that⊠I was trying to be nice, I didnât want to make any enemies. Well, that trip home told me a lot. I was out of a job and the other SOBs were working. If I got the chance to try again, I wasnât going to give anyone a break except Conrad Dobler.
Making use of every dirty trick in the book to win battles on the line, by midseason Dobler found himself a starting guard for the Cardinalsâ next to Hall of Fame right tackle Dan Dierdorf. Dobler quickly gained a reputation among opponents for his tactics â which gained mainstream notoriety in 1975 season when Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Doug Sutherland went public over the teeth marks and ankle bruises suffered lining up over Dobler. âWhat you need when you play Dobler is a string of garlic beads and a wooden stake,â Sutherland declared.
Baddest Mofos must have different meanings since this guy wasnât included
Jack Tatum:
Known as âThe Assassin,â Tatum, a safety for the Oakland Raiders and Houston Oilers, was notorious for his punishing hits, earning him a reputation as one of the most feared players in NFL history.
Lambert and Tatum were the first two I thought of.
My first game I watched was the Colts/Giants Championship game. I thought the Cleveland Browns were named after Jim Brown because he was so much better than any player in the NFL.
Iâve pretty much seen every player in the TV era, Can only guess about players prior
George Atkinson and Ben Davidson, both Oakland Raiders.
Ben Davidson? No way.
Man I almost had him in my list, but Night Trane Lane was just as feared and is in the HOF. Plus Lane is from Texas!
Lambert was the other guy I had on then took off.
Night Train was a big corner for his time. Back then, they didnât throw as much and rarely at Laneâs side. The only time i saw Detroit play was Thanksgiving against the Eagles.
Talk about big mammajammas, the OT for the Eagles, Bob Brown, could block out the sun
So where does Dick Butkus rank?
Behind Singletary.
I thought Lawrence Taylor was the baddest LB Iâve seen,
If you take Butkus in his era, he was a great LB. He was in the era of Ray Nitschke, Tommy Nobis & Sam Huff. Nobis may have been the best of the bunch but he was on lousy teams. Butkus played on lousy teams but Chicago got more TV time back then because they had Gale Sayers.
HmmmâŠ
I dunno.
At 6â3" and 245, Butkus was certainly biggerâŠand probably every bit as âbad.â
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I figured you would disagree and thatâs fine.
But size ainât got nothing to do with it.
Both were bad ass, to be sure.
But one was BIGGERâŠAND every bit as âbad ass.â
So based on that, I give the edge to Butkus, as the BIGGER bad ass.
Night Train Lane. If you see videos of his hits you wonder how guys got up.
Well, he never won the âButkus Award.â He was as good an LB as there ever was, in my opinion. But itâs really hard to compare players from different eras with different rules.
Tatum hit Stingleyâs grandfather and paralyzed him in a pre season game.
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