Leonard Leroy Willis (born March 4, 1953) is a retired

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 ...

player. He played college football at

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

and was drafted by the

Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansi ...

in the 4th round of the 1976 NFL Draft. He was a wide receiver and

kick 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 the

New Orleans Saints The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...

and Buffalo Bills from 1976 to 1979.

College career

Willis played for the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tre ...

in 1974 and

1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...

after transferring from junior college. His teammates with the Buckeyes included 2-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, fellow wide receiver

Brian Baschnagel Brian Dale Baschnagel (born January 8, 1954 in Kingston, New York) is a former American football player. He played wide receiver for the Chicago Bears. Early life Brian Baschnagel's family relocated often due to his father's professional resp ...

, fullback Pete Johnson and safety Tim Fox, and his

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

was Cornelius Greene. In 1974, he was clocked as the fastest Buckeye football player ever until that time, running the

100-yard dash 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length&nb ...

in 9.3 seconds. Besides playing as a receiver he also returned kicks and even played some free safety for the Buckeyes. In 1974, he did not catch a pass, but ran 11 times for 146 yards, a 13.3 yards per rush average. In 1975, he caught 17 passes for 350 yards, a 20.6 yards per catch average, with 2

touchdown A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Amer ...

s. His receiving yards and touchdowns were each good enough to rank 8th in the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

. The Buckeyes won the Big Ten Conference championship in both his years with the team, but lost in the Rose Bowl each season.

Professional career

Willis was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings with the 118th pick in the 4th round of the 1976 NFL Draft. Willis played in all 14 regular season games for the Vikings in 1976, primarily as a

. He returned 24 kickoffs for 552 yards, a 23.0 yard average. He also returned 30 punts for 207 yards, a 6.9 yard average. He also played in all 3 playoff games for the Vikings, as the Vikings won the

NFC Championship The NFC Championship Game is the annual championship game of the National Football Conference (NFC) and one of the two semi-final National Football League playoffs, playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional Amer ...

, primarily returning punts and kickoffs. In

Super Bowl XI Super Bowl XI was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Oakland Raiders and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Minnesota Vikings to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for i ...

against the Oakland Raiders Willis returned 3 kickoffs for 57 yards (a 19.0 yard average) and 3 punts for 14 yards (a 4.7 yard average). In 1977 Willis played for both the New Orleans Saints and the Buffalo Bills, again primarily as a kick returner. In 1978, playing for Buffalo, he only played in 4 games and returned just 1 kickoff. But he also had his only 2 professional receptions that year, gaining 41 yards for a 20.5 yard average on those receptions. He finished his career with Buffalo in 1979, playing 7 games and returning 4 kickoffs for 92 yards that season.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Willis, Leonard 1953 births Minnesota Vikings players New Orleans Saints players Buffalo Bills players Ohio State Buckeyes football players American football wide receivers Players of American football from Washington, D.C. Living people Chicago Blitz players