Chicago Bears All-Time Nickname Team

On-field skill matters in most all-time teams, but this one is purely based on nicknames!

The Chicago Bears have featured players with some of the most interesting and colorful nicknames through the years. Could we make a roster entirely based on cool nicknames?

Of course we can.

Here is our favorite at every starting position on the team. Some of these are well-known nicknames throughout all of Bears’ fandom, while others have been adopted by the Windy City Gridiron faithful.

OFFENSE

QB – Chuckin’ Charlie O’Rourke

RB – Harold “Red” Grange, “The Galloping Ghost” (aka The Wheaton Iceman)

RB – Walter “Sweetness” Payton

FB – Bronislau “Bronko” Nagurski

TE – James “Robocop” Thornton

WR – Edgar “Eggs” Manske

WR – Bernard “B-Twice” Berrian

LT – “Jimbo” Covert

LG – Teven “Professor Pancake” Jenkins

C – Clyde “Bulldog” Turner

RG – George “Moose” Musso

RT – James “Big Cat” Williams

You know a nickname is good when you didn’t even know it wasn’t the player’s actual first name like Bronko and Bulldog. It’s a basic law of Chicago Bears content creation that you have to list Walter Payton and we both love the nickname “Sweetness” so we’re adding a second running back slot. Don’t at us.

What, you’ve never heard Teven Jenkins called Professor Pancake before? Then let’s all say it more together so that it catches on.

Some left on the cutting room floor include the Punky QB (Jim McMahon), Sexy Rexy Grossman, the A-Train Anthony Thomas, Tarik “Chicken Salad” Cohen, Raymont “Ultraback” Harris, V-12 Velus Jones, Dennis “Silky D” McKinnon, and Frank “Gate 68” Omiyale. Even in a nickname team, that’s too much of a liability to carry Omiyale. Harlon Hill the Harbinger of Thrill is a JB original and unlike trying to nickname a current player like Teven Jenkins, JB never actually watched Hill live, so it’s tough to retroactively give him a nickname 60+ years after he stopped playing.

DEFENSE

DE – “The Claw” Ed Sprinkle (aka The Meanest Man in Pro Football)

DT – Steve “Mongo” McMichael

DT – William “The Refrigerator” Perry (aka The Fridge)

DE – “Danimal” Dan Hampton (aka King)

LB – Dick Butkus, “The Maestro of Mayhem” (aka The Animal, The Enforcer, and The Robot of Destruction…geesh, Butkus had a Babe Ruth-like number of nicknames)

LB – “Samauri” Mike Singletary

LB – Ron “Chico” Rivera

CB – Charles “Peanut” Tillman

S – Doug Plank, “The Human Missile”

S – Gary “The Hitman” Fencik

CB – George “One-Play” McAfee

Some current nicknames that might creep into our hearts if they catch on include “Jack-in-the-Box” Sandborn (another JB original), Dragonslayer (Jaylon Johnson), Spidey (Kyler Gordon), and Dino Dex (Gervon Dexter). Donnell Woolford’s “The Wolf” was a tough call on cutdown day.

SPECIAL TEAMS

K – “Automatic” Jack Manders

P – Trenton Gill, “The Gillotine”

LS – “The Mann,” Patrick Mannelly

KR – “The Kansas Comet,” Gale Sayers

PR – “The Windy City Flyer,” Devin Hester

Yes, we’re rolling with a JB original here for punter because it actually made it onto the “paper of record” in Pro Football Reference. Who says dreams can’t come true? Rookie punter Tory Taylor already has some good potential nicknames like The Crocodile Punter and Pinball Wizard (the latter a Bill Zimmerman original) that might supplant it.

Current Bears head coach Matt Eberflus seemingly had a nickname for every player on his squad last year, and getting these nicknames documented on a national level can only help the fun factor of the league. Plus, we’ll look to document, create, or amplify fun nicknames of current Bears going forward to add to the rich history of Bears nicknames.

If you have any favorites we didn’t highlight, hit up the comments below. If we can find documented use of the nickname, we’ll add it to the database and revisit the squad down the line!