SandJack TV
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Football
  • Basketball
  • NFL
  • NBA
  • WNBA
  • Women’s Sports
  • Tennis
  • Boxing
  • Baseball
  • UFC
  • MMA
  • Netball
  • Racing
  • MORE
    • Athletics
    • Golf
    • Cycling
    • Formula 1
    • ESports
  • Home
  • Football
  • Basketball
  • NFL
  • NBA
  • WNBA
  • Women’s Sports
  • Tennis
  • Boxing
  • Baseball
  • UFC
  • MMA
  • Netball
  • Racing
  • MORE
    • Athletics
    • Golf
    • Cycling
    • Formula 1
    • ESports
No Result
View All Result
SandJack TV
No Result
View All Result
Home NFL

Steve McMichael, Hall of Fame Tackle for Champion Bears, Dies at 67

April 24, 2025
in NFL
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0 0
A A
0
Steve McMichael, Hall of Fame Tackle for Champion Bears, Dies at 67
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter



rewrite this content and keep HTML tags

Steve McMichael, a Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears with a theatrical personality and a ferocious intensity who helped anchor what might have been the most predatory defense in the history of the N.F.L. during the team’s 1985 Super Bowl-winning season, died on Wednesday in Joliet, Ill. He was 67.

The Bears confirmed his death, in hospice care. The team said he had struggled for years with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the nervous system more commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

McMichael played 15 years in the N.F.L., 13 of them with Chicago and none more rapacious than the 1985 season. The Bears lost only once that season while rampaging through the league with the so-called 46 defense, orchestrated by the team’s boisterous defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan.

Placing eight defensive players near the line of scrimmage, Chicago hounded, outmuscled and intimidated opponents. No victory was more thorough than the Bears’ 44-0 dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys on their own field on Nov. 17, 1985. It was the worst defeat in the team’s then-26-year history.

That afternoon, McMichael collected one of the 92 ½ career sacks he accumulated with the Bears, placing him second in franchise history to his teammate Richard Dent. In the view of many, Dallas simply gave up. Tom Landry, Dallas’s coach at the time, called the defeat “an old-fashioned country licking.”

“I call it the piranha effect,” the Chicago defensive end Dan Hampton told reporters afterward. “We start getting on somebody and we smell blood. We seem to go into a frenzy.”

Chicago’s only loss that season came against the Miami Dolphins. The Bears dominated the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, 46-10, played on Jan. 26, 1986, in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

Though somewhat small for a defensive lineman at 6 feet 2 inches and 270 pounds, McMichael possessed immense strength and slippery quickness. He starred on a defense that included three other future Hall of Famers: the defensive ends Hampton and Dent and the linebacker Mike Singletary. He played in 191 consecutive games for the Bears and 12 more in the playoffs, a franchise record.

“He was a defensive tackle taking on double teams and triple teams and leg whips and this and that,” Hampton told The Chicago Tribune for its obituary about McMichael. “To then essentially defy the physical reality of it is mind-boggling.”

McMichael reveled in an exaggerated, untamed persona. His nicknames included Ming the Merciless, after the tyrant in “Flash Gordon,” and Mongo, after the dimwitted ruffian who punches out a horse in the Mel Brooks comedy “Blazing Saddles.”

In a 2019 speech recounted by The Associated Press in its obituary, McMichael joked that his brief and inconsequential stay with the Patriots, who had chosen him in the third round of the 1980 N.F.L. draft, ended after a season because he was considered “the criminal element in the league.”

But the Bears readily accepted him in 1981. McMichael described walking into the office of the Bears’ founder, George Halas, and being told: “I’ve heard what kind of dirty rat you are in practice. Don’t change, Steve.”

After a final N.F.L. season, with the Green Bay Packers in 1994, his blustery guise helped ease McMichael into five years as a professional wrestler, who used a pile-driver move on opponents as if they were footballs with the “Mongo Spike.”

McMichael was born on Oct. 17, 1957, in Houston. His parents divorced when he was a year old. His mother, an English teacher born Betty Ruth Smalley, later married E.V. McMichael, an oil company executive. Steve, who took his stepfather’s last name as a toddler, declined to discuss his surname at birth. His mother died of breast cancer in 2018, and his stepfather died after being shot in 1976.

In 1964, the family moved to tiny Freer, Texas, south of San Antonio. McMichael lettered in football, baseball, basketball, track, tennis and golf at Freer High School.

He played football at the University of Texas, where he was an All-American in 1979. In 2010, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In the N.F.L., he was named All-Pro in 1985 and 1987.

He is survived by his wife, Misty (Davenport) McMichael; a daughter, Macy McMichael; two sisters, Kathy and Sharon McMichael; and a brother, Robert. His first marriage, to Debra Marshall in 1998, ended in divorce.

In 2020, McMichael began experiencing tingling in his arms. A year later, he was diagnosed with A.L.S. He kept his humor when he revealed his illness to The Chicago Tribune in April 2021, saying that it “will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.”

As the disease progressed, McMichael lost the ability to move and to speak.

He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 3, 2024, but he was too ill to attend the ceremony. The bust and gold jacket awarded to inductees were presented to him earlier that day at his bedside at his home in Homer Glen, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where he was surrounded by former Bears teammates.

“It’s a cruel irony that the Bears’ Ironman succumbed to this dreaded disease,” George McCaskey, the Bears’ chairman, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Yet Steve showed us throughout his struggle that his real strength was internal, and he demonstrated on a daily basis his class, his dignity and his humanity.”



Source link

Tags: BearschampionDiesFameHallMcMichaelStevetackle
Previous Post

Caitlin Clark’s Connection With Rookie Makayla Timpson Has Fever Fans Salivating

Next Post

Oleksandr Usyk vs Daniel Dubois 2 set for July 19 at Wembley

Related Posts

Amid WWE’s Hollywood Streak, Movie Star Expresses Desire To Portray Ric Flair on the Big Screen
NFL

Amid WWE’s Hollywood Streak, Movie Star Expresses Desire To Portray Ric Flair on the Big Screen

May 2, 2025
Schottenheimer’s draft focus – Adding leaders to Cowboys roster
NFL

Schottenheimer’s draft focus – Adding leaders to Cowboys roster

May 2, 2025
Details on former Seahawks star Tyler Lockett’s one-year contract with the Tennessee Titans
NFL

Details on former Seahawks star Tyler Lockett’s one-year contract with the Tennessee Titans

May 1, 2025
Chiefs News: Josh Simmons has Jason Kelce’s seal of approval
NFL

Chiefs News: Josh Simmons has Jason Kelce’s seal of approval

May 1, 2025
Dolphins may have stole Jonah Savaiinaea from the Patriots – Miami Dolphins News 5/1/25
NFL

Dolphins may have stole Jonah Savaiinaea from the Patriots – Miami Dolphins News 5/1/25

May 1, 2025
NFC South Draft Discussion With Fox Sports’ Greg Auman
NFL

NFC South Draft Discussion With Fox Sports’ Greg Auman

April 30, 2025
Next Post
Oleksandr Usyk vs Daniel Dubois 2 set for July 19 at Wembley

Oleksandr Usyk vs Daniel Dubois 2 set for July 19 at Wembley

Format, teams, key match-ups and everything you need to know

Format, teams, key match-ups and everything you need to know

Please login to join discussion
No Result
View All Result
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
WNBA team power rankings: early predictions for 2025 season

WNBA team power rankings: early predictions for 2025 season

October 24, 2024
All 26 Call of Duty Servers Locations and Why It’s Important

All 26 Call of Duty Servers Locations and Why It’s Important

August 13, 2024
Fact Check: Did Caitlin Clark Sue Angel Reese for  Million?

Fact Check: Did Caitlin Clark Sue Angel Reese for $10 Million?

March 26, 2025
All Fortnite Reload Weapons – Best and Worst Fresh Guns

All Fortnite Reload Weapons – Best and Worst Fresh Guns

November 13, 2024
Euro 2024: Slovakia v Romania

Euro 2024: Slovakia v Romania

0
Manchester United target Khvicha Kvaratskhelia close to joining Paris Saint-Germain – Man United News And Transfer News

Manchester United target Khvicha Kvaratskhelia close to joining Paris Saint-Germain – Man United News And Transfer News

0
The Phillies Lock up Another Part of Their League-Best Rotation

The Phillies Lock up Another Part of Their League-Best Rotation

0
DeMar DeRozan’s Future at Bulls in Doubt: Report

DeMar DeRozan’s Future at Bulls in Doubt: Report

0
Fans Celebrate Paige Bueckers’ First WNBA Bucket With Dallas Wings

Fans Celebrate Paige Bueckers’ First WNBA Bucket With Dallas Wings

May 2, 2025
A’ja Wilson’s UConn Outfit Before Aces WNBA Preseason Game Raises Eyebrows

A’ja Wilson’s UConn Outfit Before Aces WNBA Preseason Game Raises Eyebrows

May 2, 2025
Caitlin Clark Talks Returning to Iowa City, New WNBA Season

Caitlin Clark Talks Returning to Iowa City, New WNBA Season

May 2, 2025
Amid WWE’s Hollywood Streak, Movie Star Expresses Desire To Portray Ric Flair on the Big Screen

Amid WWE’s Hollywood Streak, Movie Star Expresses Desire To Portray Ric Flair on the Big Screen

May 2, 2025
  • About Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA
  • Cookie Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact Us
SAND JACK TV

Copyright © 2024 Sand Jack TV.
Sand Jack TV is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Football
  • Basketball
  • NFL
  • NBA
  • WNBA
  • Women’s Sports
  • Tennis
  • Boxing
  • Baseball
  • UFC
  • MMA
  • Netball
  • Racing
  • MORE
    • Athletics
    • Golf
    • Cycling
    • Formula 1
    • ESports

Copyright © 2024 Sand Jack TV.
Sand Jack TV is not responsible for the content of external sites.