BRAVE BULL : Butz Is Still Ornery After All These Years

Rivers rage, mountains move, leaves turn, fires burn and Dave Butz remains, a fixture in the Washington Redskins defensive line since George Allen’s finger-licking days in the nation’s capital.

You don’t count the years with Butz, or so the joke goes, you count the rings. For the record, at 37 he’s the oldest player in the National Football League, and headed next week to his third Super Bowl.

For 14 years, Butz has held down the Redskins’ defensive front the way an anchor holds a ship. At 6 feet 7 inches and 300 pounds, he’s been the league’s immovable object, his opponents the removable force.

“David’s a dinosaur,” says Joe Theismann, Butz’s good friend and former teammate, “Someday our children will go to the Smithsonian and see a skeleton of Dave Butz, right next to the brontosaurus.”

With an average of about 76 defensive plays a game, Butz figures that over the years, he has been hit about twice as many times as Moe whacked Curly.

And for what? Butz’s career assignment has not been so much to get the quarterback as to clear the path for others. Need an excavator? Call Dave Butz. Then stand back.

With his size, Butz usually demands the attention of two, sometimes three, offensive linemen. And while Butz is peeling guards off his legs, Dexter Manley gets the sack.

A nice career--for Dexter Manley.

“I’ve never cut a car in half, done any crazy dances or been a cheerleader,” Butz said. “That’s not me and that’s not what I’m there for.”

Butz is there for the same reason Gibraltar is there.

Dave Butz has always been around, it seems, even as old quarterbacks and eras pass.

“I’ve tackled Larry Csonka, played against Joe Namath, O.J. Simpson,” he said.

But in the end, he says, it won’t be the assault on his body that ultimately drives him from the game but rather the erosion of emotions.

“It’s kind of amazing that everyone before me and everyone that came in with me is gone,” Butz said last week as he relaxed at home in Reston, Va.

“A lot of them have left me over the years and it’s taken a piece out of me. You get more friends, and more leave, more lockers to clean out. You realize what they did for you. It takes a piece out of you. I was getting hacked up there for a while.

“I used to warm up with Tom Beasley. He’s gone. Then Curtis (Jordan). Gone. It was Theismann before that. Mark Moseley was my roommate. Now, during stretching, I’m by myself. It’s like saying good morning to ghosts.”

Butz is a paradox. On his own terms he can play the part of giant and walk alone--ominous, aloof, crusty, unapproachable, unlikable.

Yet there is a softness few see: Dave Butz handing out flowers to training camp staff workers every year, Butz mourning the retirement of a teammate, Butz at home by the fire carving intricate wooden duck decoys with his Fred Flintstone hands.

“You look at him on the surface and you have no idea who he is,” Theismann said. “He’s not the kind of guy where you walk into a room and throw your arms around him. He’s so big, you naturally shy away from him. And he likes it that way.”

Butz began wood-carving about five years ago as a hobby and therapy.

“I’ve seen a lot of players who’ve had very stiff, arthritic fingers,” he said. “I thought it would be good to have a hobby where you have to maintain a high level of dexterity. I thought carving would ensure less stiffness and less pain.”

Theismann still can’t get over the sight.

“The guy breaks quarterbacks and makes ducks,” he said. “You don’t picture a guy that big doing that. You don’t picture Dave Butz carving Pinocchio.”

Butz on one hand is sensitive, shy, intelligent, misunderstood--a craftsman and a loner, On the other, he’s a fierce football player, capable of icy stares and moments of rage and bewilderment.

Butz, Theismann and former kicker Moseley once car-pooled in Butz’s van to all Redskin home games.

Said Theismann: “His greatest challenge on Sunday was, well, he felt if he could run over a dead animal it was good luck. All of a sudden he’d swerve and yell ‘Hey, I got one. Look I flattened that squirrel!”

You didn’t want to be near Butz if he came into the locker room singing, “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”

And if Butz put tire tracks on two dead animals?

“Well, I pitied the opponent,” Theismann said. “If he couldn’t find a dead one, we’d take back roads through the woods until we did. We’d have to change our route. I couldn’t believe that.”

Butz enjoys hiding behind a gruff public persona. It’s his shield, his protector.

When a reporter recently tried to flag down Butz in his van as he was leaving Redskin Park, Butz flashed a menacing grin and hit the accelerator as if going after another squirrel.

An hour later, Butz invited the same reporter into his home. That, it seems, is Dave Butz.

He came into the league in 1973, from Purdue, as a first-round pick with the St. Louis Cardinals. After a heated contract dispute there, he joined the Redskins in 1975 as a free agent, though Washington had to compensate the Cardinals with two first-round picks and a second-round choice.

Butz didn’t soon forget his enemies, the Cardinals, or the weight of his considerable price tag.

Theismann said that Butz’s strength is devastating, that it’s lucky for the world that Butz doesn’t wish to break it in two.

Butz could use it to his advantage.

“He has no idea on this Earth how strong he is,” Theismann said. “I used to wrestle around with him and he’d grab me from behind and squeeze my chest harder and harder. The only time he’d let go was when I started turning blue. And you know, he’s had one of his best years in football and he basically goes unnoticed.”

It could be Butz’s epitaph.

“I’ve seen him play at his full potential only a few times,” Theismann said. “He has an obsession with the St. Louis Cardinals, to get back at them for getting rid of him. He’d do things to them I’d never seen. And he gets up for playoff games.”

You can check that one with the Minnesota Vikings. In last week’s NFC title game, Butz dominated the interior line and had two quarterback sacks. His deflection of Wade Wilson’s pass in the third quarter led to Mel Kaufman’s interception, which set up a Redskin field goal.

No one could, or likely would, ever accuse Butz of hanging on at the end of a career.

“Hanging on?” Butz said. “Two sacks, one tip. I don’t think I’m hanging on. No, I don’t think that.”

Who said anything about hanging on?

Butz, in high school, shattered a basketball backboard long before Darryl Dawkins made it fashionable.

Theismann said Butz used to spot him 14 points in pickup basketball games to 15 and then effortlessly back Theismann into the basket for 15 consecutive slam dunks.

Next.

Football, though, wasn’t as easy.

Much was expected of Butz when he joined George Allen’s Redskins back in 1975, considering the draft picks Washington had to give up to get him.

And there was nothing quite like being a kid in someone else’s Over-the-Hill Gang.

“He didn’t think too much of me as a young guy,” Butz said of Allen. “Of course, now he says it’s one of the wisest trades they’ve ever made.”

Allen, of course, had a theory about football. He never liked to start a player younger than he was. So peach-fuzz Butz took his lumps.

Shortly after Butz was married, Allen reportedly sent Butz’s bride a rolling pin as a wedding present, with note attached: “Dear Candy: Use when necessary. Best wishes, George Allen.”

Butz was slow to develop, sure, but it had more to do with a serious knee injury that had wiped out his 1974 season. More difficult was breaking into a defense filled with Allen’s veterans.

“There was a strong clique here when I came,” Butz said. “George wanted guys who looked good, who executed things properly. I had problems with the fact that you’d practice all week with the No. 1 unit and you’d get in a game and they’d give you an audible you’d never heard of.”

That used to be a favorite trick of defensive end Diron Talbert, Butz said.

“(Allen) would take me out if I made a wrong move,” Butz said, “Which is really the wrong thing to do. But once I got in shape and learned the system, they couldn’t keep me out of the lineup.”

Butz took over as a full-time starter in 1978 and has remained since. He is tied with Talbert for second on the team’s all-time sack list with 58, trailing only Manley.

No one is quite sure how many other careers Butz has saved.

“He’s kept a lot of big guys off me for a lot of years,” nine-year veteran linebacker Neal Olkewicz said. ‘It’s probably why I’ve been able to last this long.

“He’s really a huge individual in there. It’s amazing he’s played as long as he has. He’s not a flashy guy like Dexter. He doesn’t jump up and down. But he’s just a dominant guy in the middle. He almost always has two guys on him. He can just stand there and hold people up.”

Butz is often overlooked because he doesn’t bring pompons to work. In fact, if you watched him on the sideline, you’d think he didn’t care at all.

“Most of the time, you’ll see me sitting on the bench while all the rest of the guys are off watching,” Butz said. “I can’t help the offense, other than to wish them well. But I can help the defense by thinking what they’re doing to me and what I can do to correct it.”

He doesn’t talk to opposing players on the field, for fear he might end up liking them. Butz doesn’t want to know about a guy’s wife and two children or his volunteer work for charity, at least not while Butz is trying to separate the man from his sternum.

The truth is, Butz cares too much about his game.

That’s why it hurts inside to lose games, and teammates.

How has Butz outlasted the others? Probably for the same reason a Sequoia outlasts a peach tree.

Butz, though, has other theories.

“I have a very good work ethic,” he said. “I don’t do too much to excess. I don’t do anything I consider detrimental to football. I don’t ride a motorcycle. I don’t drink to excess. I don’t stay up late at night. Another thing, I know how to get away from it.”

Football, that is. Butz is not a believer in year-round conditioning and game-film study. When the season is over, Butz and Candy take their three kids back home to Belleville, Ill.

“If you stay around your coaches, they’ll bother you to death,” Butz said. “Life is not totally football, and I don’t think kids should be ground into it. They should be looking for other things to do in the off-season. There’s more to life than lifting weights.”

Not surprisingly, Butz is notorious for missing May mini-camps.

“I’m not ready to run for anybody, anywhere, anytime in the month of May,” he said. “I don’t start until the first of June.”

So far, Butz has managed just fine. He’s been remarkably resilient over the years. How many 14-year veterans can count all their serious injuries on one hand?

“My left knee was totally rebuilt, I’ve had one broken thumb, a torn biceps muscle and one sprained ankle,” Butz said.

How much longer Butz will play is a question he won’t answer. Some have suggested a Super Bowl win might be a super way to end it.

“It’s crossed our minds,” Butz said. “I’ve heard a lot of people say I can go out on top, but that doesn’t faze me as much as my ability to do my job. It’s more of how far I can go.”

Physically, Butz believes, he can play a few more years.

“I don’t feel like I’m 37,” he said. “I know football is supposed to take five years off your life expectancy. There’s not too many of us living beyond 55. I’m sure all the stress, the hitting, the sweating, the extremes of heat and cold eventually wear on you. I’ll worry about that when it comes. I’ve been at it so long, why worry about it now.”

Mentally, though, Butz is nearly exhausted. The locker room still seems empty at times. Butz’s old friends are gone, his era has passed. You make new friends, but it’s never the same.

“It’s not quite possible,” Butz said. “I’m 37 and they’re all 22. I’m changing diapers and they’re thinking of making diapers, so to speak.”

And your friends?

“They’re gone,” Butz said. “Football is a pretty ruthless business. You can know somebody, know their family and you come in the next day and their locker’s cleaned out.”

And every time they take with them a piece of Butz. Butz was getting hacked up there for a while.