George Edward "Butch" Byrd (born September 20, 1941) is a former professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

. He started his career playing

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...

. He joined the

Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...

and immediately made an impact in the defensive backfield, with seven interceptions. Byrd was also a

punt returner A return specialist or kick returner is a player on the special teams unit of a gridiron football team who specializes in returning punts and kickoffs. There are few players who are exclusively return specialists; most also play another positio ...

for his entire career. Byrd holds the Bills' career records for interceptions (40), interception return yards (666) and interceptions returned for touchdowns (5). He was a five-time American Football League All-Star, and was selected for the second-team, All-Time All-AFL. Byrd is a 1980 inductee of the Boston University Hall of Fame, LaSalle Institute Athletic Hall of Fame, Albany Capital District Hall of Fame, named to the All-Time Buffalo Bills Silver Anniversary Team in 1984, and in 2008 was selected to the

Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame Greater may refer to: * Greatness, the state of being great *Greater than, in inequality Inequality may refer to: Economics * Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention e ...

References

External links

Byrd's citation on the Boston University Hall of Fame site

1941 births Living people People from Watervliet, New York American football cornerbacks American football safeties American football return specialists Boston University Terriers football players Buffalo Bills players Denver Broncos players American Football League All-Star players American Football League All-Time Team American Football League players {{defensiveback-1940s-stub

See also

References

External links