Iconic Pack safety Butler’s last leap
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Inventing the Lambeau Leap didn’t help get LeRoy Butler into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But that play is as good an example as any of why he will be inducted into the Hall on Saturday.
If you follow the Green Bay Packers, you might have seen the clip of Butler’s famous jump into the south end of Lambeau’s stands enough times to picture it in your mind’s eye: Reggie White picks up a fumble at the 34-yard line, runs about 10 yards up the field, and as he’s being pulled out of bounds pitches the ball to Butler, who runs it the rest of the way and leaps into Lambeau’s south end zone to celebrate the score.
What you probably don’t remember from that play in December 1993 is Butler also forced the fumble that led to his famous touchdown. Los Angeles Raiders running back Randy Jordan had caught a screen pass, and Butler, reading from his safety position, flew up and hit him squarely just as the running back turned to go up field. As Butler was about to plant Jordan into the ground, he ripped the ball from Jordan’s arms. White recovered, Butler popped to his feet, and you know the rest.
That’s the kind of play that wins football games. It also showcased Butler’s all-around skills. He was a rarity as a complete safety who excelled in coverage, against the run and as a blitzer. He took the ball away in the passing game and run game. He was maybe the first all-around safety of his era.
“It’s instinctual stuff, stuff you can’t teach,” said Hall of Famer Steve Young, who faced Butler six times, including four in the playoffs, as quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers.
“When they say quarterback of the defense, they mean he calls plays and gets them in the right defense. But that’s half of the quarterbacking. The other half is a lot of art. LeRoy was an artist. He was very unpredictable because he wouldn’t read you, he would sense something and take off and get in the middle of all our plans. He was a great talent, all the stuff you already know, but I’d add he was a defensive artist. He didn’t just paint by numbers, he painted outside the line.”
Butler’s stats stack up with other Hall of Famers
As the Green Bay representative on the Hall of Fame selection committee, I presented Butler’s case to the other voters when he was among the 15 modernera finalists the last three years. The crux of his case rested on several points, starting with his all-decade selection for the 1990s. With Steve Atwater voted into the Hall in 2020 and Drew Pearson in ’21, Butler was the only first-team alldecade player from the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ‘’80s and ’90s not in the Hall.
There also were impressive stats that illustrated his all-around play-making. Since the NFL began tracking sacks in 1982, Butler is one of only four players (and only two safeties) with at least 35 interceptions (he had 38) and 20 sacks (he had 20½). The others are Hall of Famers Charles Woodson (65 and 20) and Brian Dawkins (37 and 26), plus Ronde Barber (38 and 20), who was a Hall finalist for the first time this year.
Additionally, the Pro Football Researchers Association conducted archival research to fill in the sacks gap between 1960 and ’81, the results of which are on Pro Football Reference’s website. Including those seasons adds only one more player to the 35-20 list, Hall of Fame safety Larry Wilson (52 and 21).
Then there’s Butler’s stats stacked up against the three most recent safeties to enter to the Hall: Atwater, John Lynch and Troy Polamalu. Stats aren’t everything in determining Hall of Famers, but they’re part of the mix, along with endorsements (especially from opponents) and the eye test for whether a player changed games.
To simplify the comparison, if you combine interceptions, sacks, and fumbles forced and recovered into one bigplay number, Butler leads among that group with 85½, followed by Polamalu (69), Lynch (67) and Atwater (45).
Again, stats aren’t everything. Polamalu was a first-ballot Hall of Famer because regardless of the numbers he was a supreme disruptor. Atwater made the Hall because he was an intimidator in an era when rules still allowed safeties to impact passing games that way.
But Butler’s numbers illustrate the multiple ways he could change a game.
“LeRoy to me was one of the first allpurpose safeties, guys that could cover, and also guys that come down into the box, legitimate box players,” said Brian Billick, who as the Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator prepared for Butler in the offseason and twice a year from 1993 to ’98.
“He’s certainly deserving and was the guy you had to account for in that secondary all the time. … that complete player. I think Dawkins was awesome, and I very much equate him with Dawkins. The emotion, the leader. The whole nine yards.”
Butler’s endorsements included one Hall of Fame coach who will remain anonymous, along with two Hall of Fame quarterbacks he faced: Young and Warren Moon.
“I think he’s very worthy,” said Moon, who as the Vikings quarterback faced Butler five times from 1994-96. “He was good at covering one-on-one, he was good as a safety on the back end, and he was also really good around the line of scrimmage. You never knew if they were going to blitz him or not, because he was a really good blitzer. I was always looking for LeRoy whenever I came out of the huddle.”
Tom Moore is most famous for being Peyton Manning’s offensive coordinator in Indianapolis for 13 years, but he has worked on offensive staffs in the NFL for every season but one since. That includes facing Butler 14 times over a seven-year span as offensive coordinator for two of the Packers’ division rivals, Minnesota and Detroit.
“When you were planning and scheming, you were definitely conscious of him, you had to account for him,” Moore said three years ago. “He was a great football player. I’m surprised he’s not in the Hall of Fame already, to tell you the truth.”
Atwater also endorsed Butler last summer, after he’d been voted in himself. When Atwater was asked what he’d tell a voter who wondered if he was just being a nice guy by showing solidarity with a respected peer who played the same position, Atwater answered:
“Just turn on the film. You compare him to other players who played the same position, even the great guys playing now, and he jumps off the film to you. There weren’t many games where LeRoy Butler didn’t make his presence felt. Offenses had to game plan for him because they knew if they were off with a pass by just a little bit he’d intercept it, or he’d make a big hit. He was a playmaker. He made the game fun to watch.”
An unlikely beginning to a legendary career
Butler’s road to the Hall of Fame was long and improbable based on his youth.
Anyone who has followed the Packers since the ’90s probably knows at least the outlines of his history.
He grew up in poverty in Jacksonville’s Blodgett Homes housing projects, and as an infant his feet were so severely pigeon-toed doctors decided to break and reset them as an initial course of treatment.
For much of his early childhood his family either carried him or transported him via wheelchair, and when he was old enough to go to school he wore bulky, painful leg braces to help him walk.
Doctors thought he’d eventually be able to discard the braces, but they didn’t know when, and a career as a professional athlete seemed a pipe dream.
Butler in fact ditched the braces at about 8 years old, though his lack of coordination from years of inactivity along with the chronic pain in his feet hardly suggested an NFL career was in his future, even though that was his dream during those trying years.
“Every time there was something negative, I thought about the NFL, and it really pushed me through,” Butler said this summer.
Still, as he got older his strength and coordination improved. He was a terrible football player when he started playing at age 12 but improved greatly year to year. He was good enough to make the freshman team in high school, then by the end of his sophomore season he was promoted to Jacksonville’s Robert E. Lee High School varsity. By his senior season he’d exploded and become a high school All-American and coveted recruit for coach Bobby Bowden’s dominant Florida State program.
After Butler’s standout college career, former Packers GM Tom Braatz selected him in the second round of the 1990 draft. He played cornerback his first two years, then moved to safety at the behest of new defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes. In 1993 Butler was selected for the first of four first-team All-Pros, and in ’94 his career really took off when Fritz Shurmur replaced Rhodes as defensive coordinator after the latter was named the Philadelphia Eagles head coach.
In 1996, Butler helped the Packers win the Super Bowl with one of the best seasons ever by a safety: five interceptions, 6½ sacks, two fumbles recovered and one fumble forced. The only safety who’s had as many or more sacks and interceptions in one season is Chicago’s Dave Duerson (seven and six in 1986).
Butler’s career ended because of a broken shoulder blade in 2001. On Saturday, 21 years later, he’ll don a gold jacket and join the NFL’s elite as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.