Today in Patriots History
Bucko Kilroy
Happy posthumous birthday to Bucko Kilroy, who would have been 103 today
Born May 30, 1921 in Philadelphia
Patriot executive from 1971 to 2007
Died July 10, 2007 at the age of 86
Francis Joseph 'Bucko' Kilroy played guard on offense, and middle guard and tackle on defense with the Eagles for 13 seasons. During that team Philly won two NFL championships, and he went to three Pro Bowls; he was also named to the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 1940's.
Bucko Kilroy had a reputation for being a tough player, and won a $25,000 lawsuit (more than three times his annual salary) when
Look magazine wrote an article implying he was a dirty player. He worked as a scout for the Eagles, Washington and Dallas from 1960-70 before joining the Patriots as their Director of Player Personnel in 1971.
He sued Life and a jury awarded him $25,000. He was pleased, because his highest salary as a player would be $8,000 and he had yet to reach it.
“That was all a bunch of garbage,” he later said of the incident. “I was just a heavy hitter. We were hard people back then, and some guys are just naturally heavy hitters. It was a different time. None of this baby-boomer stuff. We were brash people.”
Al DeRogatis, a former Giants’ lineman, found out the hard way. When he once accused Kilroy of biting his nose, Kilroy denied it.
“I didn’t bite his nose,” Kilroy said. “I bit his ear.”
Bucko Kilroy (r) helped deliver Chuck Fairbanks (l) to helped deliver coach Chuck Fairbanks one of the most successful drafts in Patriots NFL history in 1973.
In 1979 Bucko Kilroy became New England's general manager, and then vice president from 1983-93. Kilroy then worked as a scouting consultant for another thirteen years until his death.
John Hannah,
Mike Haynes,
Russ Francis,
Steve Grogan and
Sam Cunningham were among the players drafted when he was New England's player personnel director.
Kilroy is also the founder of the NFL Scouting Combine, and credited with the driving force behind both the modern day NFL draft and the Super Bowl. Bill Belichick said Kilroy was "one of the pillars of our league... a pure football man who did practically everything one person could do in the game, blazing trails every step of the way".
Bucko began his playing career in 1943 with the wartime combined team of the Eagles and Steelers. He was a six time All-Pro guard for the Philadelphia Eagles during a 13 season playing career during the 1940s and 50s.
After his playing career he worked in player personnel and scouting for the Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys. He was also one of the founders of the National Football Scouting Combine. He was the Patriots general manager from 1979 to 1982 and vice-president from 1983 to 1993. He has been a scouting consultant for New England for the past 13 years.
Kilroy was a member of the New England Patriots organization for the past 36 years, serving as personnel director (1971-78), general manager (1979-82), vice president (1983-93) and scouting consultant (1994-2007). He was a contributor to 14 of the club’s (first) 15 playoff seasons, including all five of the franchise’s trips to the Super Bowl.
In 1948 and 1949, his Eagles team became the only squad in history to post back-to-back shutouts in championship games. He once played in 146 consecutive games, then a league record, and was named to the NFL’s all-decade team for the 1940s. During his final three seasons with the Eagles, Kilroy was as a player/coach before serving as a full-time line coach for six seasons. He also served as the Eagles’ player personnel director during that time, becoming one of the five original talent scouts in the league. In 1962, he was named director of player personnel for the Washington Redskins and later served as a “super scout” for the Dallas Cowboys from 1966-1970 before joining the Patriots.
Kilroy was revered in NFL scouting circles, having started many of the scouting services that became fixtures in the NFL. He was also one of the founders of the National Football Scouting Combine, one of the most important personnel events on the NFL’s current offseason calendar. While he was with the Cowboys’ personnel department, the team won five straight division championships.
As personnel director of the Patriots, Kilroy was responsible for selecting the team’s two Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees, John Hannah (1973) and Mike Haynes (1976). He is credited with building some of the best teams in Patriots’ history, drafting Julius Adam, Hannah, Sam Cunningham, Steve Nelson, Russ Francis and Steve Grogan during his first five years as personnel director (1971-75). Over the next three years (1976-78), the Patriots compiled a 31-13 record (.705), including two playoff appearances. Over his 64-year career, Kilroy tutored numerous personnel analysts who went on to head NFL scouting departments.
If ever there's someone for whom the Hall of Fame’s contributor category was invented, it's Bucko Kilroy.
Only former New York Giants’ owner Wellington Mara served more consecutive years in the NFL than Kilroy, whose 64 seasons as a player, coach, scout and executive nosed out George Halas by one. It was something he was rightfully proud of but not the only thing. Or even the first.
Philadelphia born and bred, Kilroy became Temple’s first All-America lineman and then a two-way, three-time Pro Bowler at both offensive guard and middle guard for his hometown team. He was a rock of stability on an Eagles’ line that propelled Steve Van Buren into the Hall of Fame and the Eagles to NFL championships in 1948 and 1949.
In both title games the Eagles defense, a 5-2 alignment with Kilroy in the middle and everyone on the line, produced shutouts. It’s the only time that's happened in NFL history.
“I enjoyed playing defense,’’ Kilroy once said. “Offense was drudgery.’’
After his playing days, Kilroy became an Eagles’ assistant for five years before finding his second calling: Scouting.
Kilroy was not merely someone with an eye for talent, although he certainly had one. He was an innovator who is credited with creating the NFL scouting combine as well as the Dallas Cowboys’ information-based grading system for selecting players.
After three years scouting for the Redskins, Kilroy arrived in Dallas in 1965 with an idea: He and Gil Brandt would transform how drafting was done, turning it from a guessing game into an information-gathering endeavor.
“The more measurements you got, the more you could confirm,’’ Kilroy once said when explaining the Cowboys’ computerized approach in a time of pencils and erasers. “Anything else was an estimate or an opinion.
“I used tests and numbers as a barometer. You measured them against players you had who had been successful. You didn’t pick guys out of a football yearbook.’’
Believe it or not, Street and Smith’s college football annual was the staple of more than a few ‘’scouting’’ departments in those days. Not Kilroy’s.
"Gil Brandt and Bucko put together a system in Dallas," former Baltimore, Cleveland and New York Giants GM Ernie Accorsi once recalled. "We never had a system. We drafted OK, but it was by the seat of the pants. Everyone talks about Gil and the computers, but Bucko never got enough credit. He took that scouting system to New England and really refined it. He took it to the next level."
Kilroy was instrumental in drafting Roger Staubach, despite his naval commitment, and put together the foundation of Tom Landry’s great Dallas teams of the 1970s. In 1971 he headed off to New England, where he did it again for the Patriots during what would become a 36-year career as scouting director, general manager, vice-president and, in his later years, scouting consultant.
He drafted Hall-of-Famers John Hannah and Mike Haynes, as well as Russ Francis, despite the fact Francis had not played his senior season at Oregon. Later, he would take Stanley Morgan, Darryl Stingley, Sam Cunningham, Steve Nelson, Steve Grogan, Pete Brock and Raymond Clayborn, thus turning the long somnambulant Patriots into a playoff fixture in the mid-to-late 1970s and again in the mid-1980s, when they reached the Super Bowl for the first time.
Kilroy would help New England do it again in the late 1990s and into their present Super Bowl run, with the first three of their Super Bowl dynasty teams having been blessed by the Kilroy touch. In fact, then Patriots’ personnel director Scott Pioli, a Bill Belichick disciple, made it a requirement that each of their scouts regularly visit with Kilroy.
Bucko Kilroy spent 64 years in the National Football League as an All-Pro lineman and was later celebrated as a personnel executive and scout.
www.nytimes.com
He helped the Eagles win N.F.L. championships in 1948 and 1949. The Eagles rewarded each player on those teams with a $500 bonus and a cigarette lighter.
“We got rings, too,” Kilroy recalled. “We bought them for $65.”
He was a founder of the National Football Scouting Combine. In 1982, The Boston Globe called him “the man who helped create the science of pro scouting.” It added, “In a football sense, he is a genius.”
The late **** Steinberg, a Kilroy protégé who became general manager of the Jets, said in 1992: “He knows as much about pro football as anyone in history. He’s never been wrong in his life. He’s not what a lot of people think. He’s shrewd and organized.”
He was a bear of a man, described this way by The Globe in 1992: “He looks, quite frankly, like an unmade bed. He is a big man in the way some bears seem big, barrel-chested, heavy-legged, white shirt popping out of his suit pants. He is solid in the sense of a piano, a man who does not tread lightly through a room.”
Did not miss a start for 8 consecutive seasons (1947-1954)
Voted to the Eagles’ All-Time 60th Anniversary team as an OG
As Director of Player personnel for Dallas, he drafted Roger Staubach despite his 5 year naval commitment after graduation (1964)
Instrumental in drafting players that won three Super Bowls for the New England Patriots
Credited as a founder of the modern day NFL Draft
NFL Executive who helped fashion the Super Bowl as we know it today
Member of NFL 1940’s All-Decade Team
