BUONICONTI
TIRELESS LEADER WHO NEVER STOPPED FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE
Hall of Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti led the No-Name defense and later turned the quest to raise awareness about CTE and make football safer for its players into a lasting legacy.
Nick Buoniconti was a fighter. A 5-11, 220-pound linebacker doesn’t make it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame without being wired to scrape and claw for every inch of success, without finding a goal in everything it takes to accomplish it.
This wiring took him from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, to an All-American career with Notre Dame and, eventually, perfection as one of the stars of the 1972 Dolphins season.
The Dolphins’ defense took on the nickname of the “No-Name Defense,” and Buoniconti, undrafted in the NFL because he was a step slow and a few inches too short, embodied everything the group was about during the 1972 NFL season. He played with an edge and was maybe the only player to ever shout an expletive at Don Shula and have the Hall of Fame coach be OK with it.
Buoniconti fought his way to two Super Bowls, two Pro Bowls, two All-Pro selections and 14 professional seasons, and then he kept fighting. He fought for his fellow players as an agent and lawyer, and fought for his son after he was rendered quadriplegic by a football spinal cord injury in 1985, co-founding the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.
Buoniconti, who died in 2019 at 78 after suffering from dementia for much of the final years of his life, is still fighting.
The legendary defender is one of six 1972 Dolphins so far to posthumously be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopothy (CTE) by the Boston University CTE Center and
Brain Bank — All-Pro quarterback
Earl Morrall, star running