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Profile: Chuck Howley
By John Antonik

There are defining moments in every athlete’s career.

For Chicago Bears linebacker Chuck Howley, the team’s first-round pick in 1958, his came when he tore up his knee during a 28-21 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in 1959.

Howley’s knee was so badly injured that doctors had to take ligaments from the upper part of his leg and staple them into his knee. At 24, Howley was forced into premature retirement and went back to his hometown of Wheeling, W.Va., and operated a service station.

“I didn’t have a penny and I didn’t know what was going to become of me,” Howley said.

He soon grew bored of pumping gas all day and decided to test his knee out during a West Virginia University alumni football game the following spring. Howley did well and soon got a call from former Bear teammate Don Healy asking him if he was interested in a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys.

“Yeah, I’d like to try it,” Howley said.

The Cowboys were a new NFL franchise in 1960 and lost 11 of 12 games that season. The other result was a 31-31 tie with the New York Giants in the next to last game of the year.

Dallas coach Tom Landry, a former defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, was looking for anyone capable of helping his team climb out of the NFL West cellar.

Howley played all 13 games for Dallas in 1961 and helped the Cowboys win four games that season. Dallas had three more losing seasons before reaching the .500 mark in 1965 with a 7-7 record.

In the meantime, the Cowboys added TCU defensive tackle Bob Lilly, Alabama linebacker Lee Roy Jordan, Oregon defensive back Mel Renfro and Utah State defensive back Cornell Green to a defense that was becoming one of the best in the NFL.

By 1966, the Cowboys were ready to challenge the Green Bay Packers for NFL supremacy. Dallas lost 34-27 to Green Bay on a last-minute touchdown in what became known as the “Ice Bowl.”

Following that season, the Cowboys won five straight conference titles from 1967-71 and developed a nation-wide following as America’s team.

Howley, the team’s weakside linebacker, had a career-best six interceptions for 115 yards and a touchdown in 1968. That season was one of six times Howley was named all-pro.

Howley’s brightest moment came during Super Bowl V in 1971 when he intercepted two passes and forced a Johnny Unitas fumble on the way to being named the game’s MVP. It was the first time a defensive player won the honor and the only time in Super Bowl history a player from the losing team was named most valuable player.

A year later, Dallas returned to the Super Bowl once again and defeated Miami, 24-3. Howley, the man who always plays so well in championship games, picked off a Bob Griese pass and raced 41 yards to the Dolphins’ nine-yard line to set up the game-securing touchdown.

Howley, finishing his 13^th season at the time, was asked if he had any plans to retire.

“Are you kidding?” said Chuck. “I’m really starting to enjoy myself now.”

Howley did return for 1972 but his year ended prematurely in the next-to-last regular season game when he injured his other knee in a 34-24 victory against Washington. Howley was cut down on a crack-back block by Redskins wide receiver Charlie Taylor. There was both ligament and cartilage damage that forced him into a cast for five weeks.

Not wanting to end his career with an injury, Howley decided to rehabilitate his knee and play one more year in 1973. But he spent most of the season on the team’s taxi squad and only saw action in one game.

He announced his retirement in the summer of 1973, wrapping up a fabulous athletic career that began at West Virginia University in 1955.

The Warwood High School product was one of the school’s most versatile performers, earning varsity letters in football, track, swimming, gymnastics and wrestling. Howley not only had good size (6-feet-2, 225 pounds) but he was also one of the fastest players on the team running the 100-yard dash in 10.1 seconds.

Howley played left and middle guard as a sophomore in 1955, moved to center and linebacker as a junior in 1956, and finished his career back at guard in 1957. West Virginia won 21 of 30 games during Howley’s three varsity seasons.

“He’s a great one,” said Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder in 1956. “What a linebacker – quick and agile. He is a true All-American.”

Pitt assistant coach Darrell Lewis was assigned to scout West Virginia and once made this assessment of Howley: “He is the greatest guard I’ve ever seen. On one play he moved into the line and started to rush the passer, then dropped off to cover a receiver and batted down the pass. I never saw anyone fast enough to recover so quickly. If he makes a mistake, he recovers so fast that the opponent is unable to take advantage.”

The only thing that kept Howley from earning consensus All-America honors were nagging injuries that plagued him throughout his collegiate career. Despite that, he did earn All-America consideration by the Williamson Rating Service as a senior in 1957 and he was invited to play in three all-star games -- the East-West Shrine Game, the College Football All-Star Game and the Senior Bowl.

It was during the Senior Bowl that Howley caught the attention of NFL scouts and he was the 11^th player drafted in the first round by the Bears in 1958.

Unlike his Cowboy defensive teammates Lilly, Jordan and Renfro, Howley has yet to be awarded NFL Hall of Fame status. Yet Howley and Lilly were the only two players Landry permitted to freelance.

“Chuck,” said Landry, “has the option to blitz. Only he and Lilly may very from our defensive patterns. He can do it and get away with it.

“Howley gambles a lot,” added San Francisco 49ers coach Dick Nolan. “But about 85 to 90 percent of the time when Chuck gambles he’s right. He’s been around long enough to know when to do it and how to do it.”

Toward the end of his career when his knees could no longer permit him to run down all-pro backs like Leroy Kelly and John Brockington, Howley relied on guile and savvy to make plays. Four years after his retirement in 1977, Dallas honored Howley on its “Ring of Honor.”

Howley is a member of the West Virginia and Senior Bowl Halls of Fame. He was also part of West Virginia University’s inaugural Hall of Fame class of 1991.

Recently the Dallas Morning News picked Howley on its 40^th Anniversary Cowboy team and listed him as the franchise’s 20^th most influential player. Howley was also rated among West Virginia's greatest sports figures of the 20th century by CNNSI.com.

Following retirement, Howley ran a successful uniform rental business in Dallas and today is involved in a foundation dedicated to breeding quarterhorses at Happy Hollow -- located in Wills Point, Texas. His broodmare herd consists of more than 50 mares.

It’s only fitting that Howley, a man blessed with great speed and grace, is training animals with similar attributes.

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