Thread: The 20 Biggest Baddest Bears of All Time; #6 Dan Hampton

"Danimal" is and always will be one of my All Time favorite Bears players. If there was ever an NFL players who deserved the tag of "warrior" then it was Dan Hampton. Nothing stopped that guy not even his 10 knee surgeries. The guy could play DT or DE with equal skill and as an inside pass rusher he had one of the quickest first steps in the game.

You couldn't run on him. He was too big and fast and he was "farm boy" strong. Not weight room strong. He doesn't rank as high in career sacks as Dent or McMichael but those 25 sacks in his first three years the article talks about were before the stats on sacks were recorded, so by adding those to the 57 which were counted Hampton had 80 over his 12 year career.

Dan Hampton was the Ed O'Bradovich of my era as "OB' had been in my fathers and like "OB" Dan is a frequent commentator and critic of the Bears team and is often sought after for TV and Radio Sports Programs and is always good for a "sound bite" or a quote or two. Few players have earned the respect that he has from his play and his loyalty to the team.

Got a funny story to tell that involves Hampton in a roundabout way.

Around 1980 or so when I was still living in Green Bay the Packer players hung around at this club on Monday nights since Tuesday was there day off. I used to talk with Lynn Dickey and Paul Coffman pretty often when they stopped in.

One night the Packer RT Greg Koch was there and he had played with Hampton at Arkansas. We got to talking about the upcoming Bears game so I poked a little fun at Koch and asked him how he was gonna handle "Danimal" who by then had already developed a pretty good rep around the league as a tough guy.

Koch was no small guy. He was 6'4" and about 275-280lbs which was pretty good size for an OT in those days. Hampton was about 6'5" and 255lbs. So I'm razzing Koch, Bears fan that I am, and he says, "Hampton is a big pussy" and that he'll have no problems handling him. LOL

Well comes the game and Hampton just obliterated him all game long. I think he ended up with a couple of sacks and he was constantly getting into the Packers backfield and dropping guys for a loss. I don't know if that was the worst game of Koch's career but is sure must have been one of the more embarrassing ones.

And when DH retired, the D suffered for years. He was the cornerstone of the D.

Hard to imagine playing at the high level he did with 1980's knee surgery tech-ten times! You see guys with just one modern surgery or scope and many can't sustain their former play.

Danimal=physical manifestation of sheer willpower

He always said the way he played the game is he developed a "Refuse to lose" attitude. If you look at his hands only a few on his fingers are straight. A true warrior & complete old school baddass!

I often think about what he said at Payton's tribute at Soldier Field after #34 passed away. He said when his daughter gets older and asks him about football, the 1st thing he is going to tell her about is Walter Payton.

You know, I'm too young to know anything at all about the great Bears teams of the 1980s and early 1990s aside from what I read, but every indication I have from my reading tells me that this guy Hampton was a real beast. When the 1985 season was going on, I was only four years old, and you have to remember that I originally was a Cowboys fan in the late 1980s only because my dad brought me home a t-shirt from Texas Stadium which he went to while on a business trip to Dallas. I started reading about the Bears in the late 1990s - early 2000s and became a fan in 2005. The primary reason I like the Bears so much is because, as many of you already know, my dad knew Doug Atkins as a young child, and since he was a Bear and since he played on that 1963 championship squad, I thought that he and the Bears were pretty much bad ass. And after all, I have a degree in History from the University of Tennessee, which is where Doug played his college ball. The Bears are chalk-full of history, so it is only natural that I like them much like I do the Blackhawks, UT football and men's and women's basketball, Kentucky men's basketball, Ohio State football and men's basketball, and the Bulls.

I'm glad that I'm on this message board with so many wonderful people -- I really am. The God's honest truth is that I've learned so much about Bears history and about the nuances and techniques of the game of football that I would never have learned anywhere else. The Bears are one of my three favorite sports teams outside of the New York Yankees and the Tennessee Volunteers, and get so much joy from watching them play. That 2006 team really helped me through one of my darkest periods of my life after I had suffered through my third nervous breakdown because it gave me something to look forward to every Sunday that fall and winter while I was recovering from a hospital stay and intensive outpatient therapy. I have never given up on this team's ability to compete at a high level, even when Jerry Angelo was leading the way in the front office, and I won't do so now, nor ever. Me? I think the offensive line will get their act together, even if it means bringing in Chris Williams to play LG if we choose to re-sign James Brown or go after someone like Jonathan Scott.

Originally Posted by short faced bear

Hard to imagine playing at the high level he did with 1980's knee surgery tech-ten times! You see guys with just one modern surgery or scope and many can't sustain their former play.

Danimal=physical manifestation of sheer willpower

Here's a shot of him we can all appreciate shorty. My favorite one though is him standing with the rest of the lineman with blood dripping down off his taped knuckles and you can see all the extra padding they had around his knees. His nickname was well deserved.