Matt Suhey, the Chicago Bears fullback who spent a decade clearing paths for Walter Payton and scored the first touchdown of Super Bowl XX, has died at 68.
The news, confirmed Sunday by NBC Chicago, removes another name from the roster of the 1985 championship team that still lives in franchise lore.
Born July 7, 1958, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Suhey arrived in the NFL as a second-round pick out of Penn State in 1980 and never played for anyone else.
Over 148 games, he rushed for 2,946 yards and 20 touchdowns and added 2,113 receiving yards and five more scores. Those numbers never defined him. His job was to hit first and let Payton finish the play, a role he accepted without complaint through the Bears’ rise in the 1980s.
That partnership became one of the league’s quieter legends. Connie Payton later compared the two men to a married couple who could read each other’s thoughts. The chemistry showed on January 26, 1986, inside the Louisiana Superdome.
After Chicago had taken a 6-3 lead, Suhey took an 11-yard handoff over right guard and scored the game’s first touchdown, stretching the advantage to 13-3. He finished the 46-10 rout of the New England Patriots with 52 rushing yards on 11 carries and a 24-yard reception. Payton, famously, did not score that night. Suhey did, then went back to blocking.
Off the field the friendship lasted far longer than the career. When Payton fell ill in the late 1990s, Suhey drove him to appointments.
After Payton’s death in 1999, Suhey served as executor of the estate and helped launch the Walter Payton Liver Center. Years later, Hall of Fame tackle Jimbo Covert asked Suhey to present him in Canton, calling him a mentor who understood what it meant to be a professional and a living link to Payton.
Suhey was never a headline hunter. Teammates remembered a humble, hard-working player from an academic Pennsylvania household who treated Payton as a brother rather than a star.
In an era when fullbacks have nearly vanished, his value is harder to measure on a stat sheet than it was on Sunday afternoons at Soldier Field.
He remains listed among the 100 greatest Bears of all time, not because he piled up yards but because the yards others gained often started with him.
Chicago has lost another piece of that 1985 team. The holes he opened, and the loyalty he kept, are what remain.
