Former Packers safety and Spectrum News 1 Roundtable panelist LeRoy Butler will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday in Canton, Ohio.
Dennis Krause sat down with Butler ahead of his trip. The two talked about the Butler being drafted in the second round by the Packers, his two Super Bowl appearances, the influence of his late mother and much more.
You can watch the full sit-down interview above. Below is the Q & A format of the interview:
Dennis: Congratulations first of all. So let’s go back to the start. Jacksonville, Florida. Tell me about growing up.
LeRoy: Dennis, I’ve been knowing you for 30 years, but people who don’t know me, I don’t think they really believe where I came from. It’s hard to believe. Because poverty, all capital letters. I mean violence, every day. At one point, they averaged a homicide for 38 straight days. I mean, it was a rough place to bring up five kids. But my mom was amazing. Although we were in poverty and experienced poverty mentally, we felt rich because we had life and we had each other. My mom was just truly amazing as far as, (raising) a special needs kid like me. I told her I wanna play football. She said, why? I said mainly because I need 10 other guys to help me. And she thought it was a great idea, so I just stayed focused on that. But it was rough. I wonder why God chose me to navigate these rough waters. Because it was a place that was so bad, they eventually tore them down because the crime was so bad.
Dennis: How difficult is this without your mother (who has passed away)?
LeRoy: She always would give me these life lessons and... July 28 is her birthday. She would always tell me, if you ever get emotional, you put your hand over your mouth or you think of something funny. But from July 28 until my induction and my enshrinement, every day on my social media, I’m going to release something my mom told me. It’s hard, because I remember when Woodson knocked on my door (to tell him he made the Hall of Fame.) Dennis, I thought about in 2009, she said let’s work on your speech. I said, wait I’m not even in yet. She said, you’re going to be in and so just be prepared. So we worked on the outline of my speech back then. So, it’s easier for me to kind of shape it around eight to 10 minutes. I’ve seen some of the speeches go 53 minutes, 47 minutes, two hours. I want to know why was that important to her, and she said the reason why is, if you go too long, people will forget about what you’ve said already. And then she went further. She would like to see the story of LeRoy Butler shouldn’t be the headline, it should be the story. The headline should be your teachers, your family, your kids when you have kids, teachers. I said why did you say teachers twice, mom? She said because the teacher is going to teach you to study a playbook. I said, wait a minute, they have playbooks? She said yes. Teachers are the smartest people in the world. So, she said okay. It’s the first responders, military, volunteers. They help people who they do not know, that’s the headline. When you read a story, all this is about Mr. Butler, so that’s how she wanted me to be.
Dennis: So that night in New Orleans, winning Super Bowl XXXI over the New England Patriots. What did it mean in your life?
LeRoy: The emotions of winning a Super Bowl. I was jealous of my best friends, Emmitt Smith and Deion (Sanders), all these guys are winning the Super Bowl, am I ever going to win the Super Bowl in Green Bay? Then, I saw a sign said ‘30 years of misery has ended, we’re going to the Super Bowl‘. When I really got emotional, when I saw Lombardi’s name on the trophy. You hear about it, but when you see it and then Holmgren says something that was so profound. He said ‘this trophy means something to every team that wins it. But it means more to us, because it has our guy's name on it. Because they dominated for so long, it’s the Lombardi trophy, and I said my life is pretty much complete.
Dennis: I hate to dwell on Super Bowl XXXII, but it's part of your story. What was the emotion you took out of that loss to the Broncos (in Super Bowl 32)?
LeRoy: (Denver’s) Mike Shanahan is one of my favorite coaches. He seemed to have the one kryptonite for me. He was the one coach who said ‘you know what?’ I'm gonna have LeRoy follow Shannon Sharpe and get him out of the box.’ I was doing all this damage that particular year. He came up with a game plan that he talked widely about. Him and (Offensive Coordinator Gary) Kubiak said ‘if we can stop, not Reggie White, but if we could stop LeRoy Butler, we can win the Super Bowl.’ They did some good things. Every time Shannon would go somewhere, I would follow him, and they would have the numbers to run the ball with Terrell Davis. I said to myself ‘boy if we could win back to back Super Bowls’. It is hard to do, because we were one of the few teams that were favored by 14 points both years because we had the best team. I respected John Elway. I respected Shanahan, because they had a great game plan. It’s a game that we all talk about all the time. Had we won, maybe I would be in the Hall of Fame sooner.
Dennis: I saw recently Sue Bird was talking about knowing when it's time to retire and she just said ‘you know when you know’. Yours was kind of brought on by (a shoulder) injury. You would have played longer if you could have.
LeRoy: I would have played a couple more years. I had talked about that with Mike Sherman, who's probably one of my favorite coaches of all time, because he cared about me outside uniform. He would come up to me andhe wouldn’t talk football he would ask about my family. ‘How’s your family? How is Laurelle? How is Gabrielle?’ He knows everything about me. I just love and respect what he did. I remember Doc Mackenzie. I said ‘doc I can’t feel nothing.’ He made that face like ‘uh oh’. Because if you feel pain, okay I'm fine, but if you don't feel anything, something is not right. I got up. My shoulder just wouldn't work it just wouldn’t. We took an x-ray. It was pretty much separated. Broke. And then it had all these pieces of bone. I played 12 years, but mentally I’m thinking there's no way they are going to cut my shoulder open, open up an inch of muscle….and some fat….and put all these bones together for me to play two more years. It’s a wrap.
Dennis: It’s impossible to replicate that roar of coming out of the tunnel at Lambeau Field before a game, right?
LeRoy: You can only feel that when (you do it). When I do tours out at the stadium, we turn it up like the roar of the crowd for the people on the tour, but you can't (match it). The closest thing is if you ever watched ”Gladiator,” when Russell Crowe goes out there and right when he said ‘are you not entertained?’ When you got everybody going just…it’s nothing like it. It’s two things I would tell players when they retire, whether it’s injury or you can leave on your own. Because sometimes guys get depressed because that they don't they're not famous anymore because they take off the jersey, that's not true. I'd work on your credit. And I will get therapy. Because the therapy part of it, and which I go for the last 12 years once a week, it keeps you very measured to say you're still the same person. You still can impact the youth. You can give back to charity. You make more appearances. You could see your wife and kids more. There’s a lot of positives.
Dennis: You've waited a long time for this and I'll say something that you won't say. There were players that made it in, playing your position, that many thought, shouldn’t have gone in before you. How did you keep smiling and keep a positive attitude while you waited?
LeRoy: Because I knew it would happen. My mom told me, it’s almost like having a scratch off lottery card, but I tell you when to scratch it off. But at least you have a ticket. A lot of guys ain’t going to get a ticket. Every year, after five years, I was eligible. My mom said, ‘hey remember the ticket.’ Because we see other guys, and I agree with you. A lot of my fans will say the same thing, but I never wanted to disparage them and say ‘I should have been in over him’. It’s a little bit narcissistic and my mom didn’t like that. She just said ‘you're gonna get in, just wait. You waited your whole life.’ I said, yeah mom it would be great to get in the Hall of Fame. Then, what really got emotional is when I got my number and I didn't know what it was….it was 357. There are only 362 guys in the Hall of Fame. It’s worth waiting on. No doubt about it.