Doug Atkins obit

Doug Atkins, Feared Pass-Rusher, Dies at 85

He was not on the list.

Doug Atkins, a towering Hall of Fame defensive end who manhandled offensive linemen and quarterbacks for 17 seasons in the National Football League, most famously with the Chicago Bears, died on Wednesday at his home in Knoxville, Tenn. He was 85.

His death was confirmed by his son Dalton, who said he had been ailing for some time.

Playing from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, Atkins was a giant for his time, at 6 feet 8 inches and 280 pounds or so.

Renowned for his strength and agility, Atkins was a fearsome pass rusher. He had not only been an all-American football player at the University of Tennessee but also played basketball there and won a Southeastern Conference high-jumping championship. So when he did not send a lineman careening back into his quarterback, Atkins could simply leap over the hapless guard or tackle to pummel the passer.

“Everyone knew that holding or tripping Doug was an absolute no-no, something akin to committing suicide,” the Bears said in a profile on the team’s website.

Atkins appeared in the Pro Bowl eight times while playing for the Bears — every season from 1957 to 1963 and again in 1965. He led the defensive charge for the 1963 Bears team that yielded an average of only 10 points a game and then defeated the Giants, 14-10, for the N.F.L. championship.

Atkins credited George Allen, the Bears’ defensive coordinator that year, with letting him concentrate on rushing the passer instead of also covering short passes, as he had in the team’s previous defensive alignments.

“I was doing what I did best, teeing off on the quarterback,” Atkins later told Football Digest.

Atkins never knew how many sacks he recorded in his two years with the Cleveland Browns, his 12 with the Bears and his three with the New Orleans Saints because the N.F.L. did not begin keeping that statistic until 1982.

“When I was with the Bears, there were a few years I might have had 25 or so,” he told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans in 1995. “I do know one thing: If I did all the dancing they do today, I would have been too tired to play.”

But George Halas, the Bears’ founder, owner and coach, was none too generous with Atkins’s salary requests.

“One time the coach and I were talking about contracts, and we were talking about a matter of $500, and we got into a pretty heated argument,” Atkins recalled in his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Coach Halas said, ‘If I give you that money, you would only spend it.’ I said, ‘Coach, that is what I want it for.’ ”

But Halas was filled with praise for Atkins.

“He was a truly great defensive end, one of the greatest in history,” the Pro Football Hall of Fame quoted Halas as saying.

Fran Tarkenton, who often faced Atkins while he was the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback, once said: “When he rushes the passer with those oak-tree arms of his way up in the air, he’s 12 feet tall. And if he gets to you, the whole world starts spinning.”

Atkins told Lew Freedman in the 2006 book “Game of My Life”: “I wasn’t much of a weight man. I guess you’d call it natural strength.”

When Atkins retired, he had played in 205 N.F.L. games, the most at that time of any lineman. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982 and to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1985.

Douglas Leon Atkins was born in Humboldt, Tenn., on May 8, 1930. He played for the longtime Tennessee coach Bob Neyland on the national championship team of 1951.

The Browns made him their No. 1 draft pick in 1953, but they traded him to the Bears before the 1955 season.

Atkins was a free spirit who inspired many a story.

He had a pit bull named Rebel who, according to a Saints team trainer, once accompanied Atkins to a New Orleans watering spot, where they sat side by side on bar stools, sharing drinks.

Bears defensive back Richie Petitbon told The Times-Picayune that he once saw Atkins eat 45 pieces of fried chicken in a single sitting.

“I really was never much of a big eater,” Atkins responded. “Now, drinking was something else. I think Richie might be confusing chicken with martinis.”

After retiring, Atkins held many jobs outside football, including work for a beer distributor and a coffin company. As a result of his numerous injuries, he had to rely on a wheelchair or a cane in his later years.

“Everything is broken down,” he told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2005.

In addition to his son Dalton, Atkins is survived by two other sons, Kent and Neil; his wife, Sylvia; a brother, Royce; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

In his years with the Bears, Atkins did not confine his quarrels with Halas to money issues. He bristled at Halas’s attempts to control him.

“There was a time when there was a question as to who was running the Chicago Bears, Doug Atkins or George Halas,” the Hall of Fame lineman Stan Jones told The Chicago Tribune in 1994. “It was a very hot day early in the season. We came into the locker room, and one of the customs was that we could have oranges and cold ice packs and things like that. But you couldn’t drink a Coke at halftime.”

When Atkins nonetheless grabbed a Coke, Halas demanded he turn it over. Atkins refused.

“Doug would take a swig of the Coke, and the old man would grab the Coke,” Jones recalled. “And here we have a wrestling match going on at halftime.”

Jones added: “We made the darnedest comeback and won the game. The next day in The Chicago Tribune, the writer wrote, ‘We don’t know what Coach Halas said to that team at halftime, but it worked!’