Mark Steven Murphy (born April 22, 1958 in

Canton, Ohio Canton () is a city in and the county seat of Stark County, Ohio. It is located approximately south of Cleveland and south of Akron in Northeast Ohio. The city lies on the edge of Ohio's extensive Amish country, particularly in Holmes and ...

) is a former

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 with ...

safety Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to risk management, the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings There are ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

. He was signed by the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...

as an

undrafted free agent In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with other clubs or franchises; i.e., not under contract to any specific team. The term is also used in reference to a player who is under contract at present but who is a ...

in 1980. He played

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 rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

West Liberty State College West Liberty University (WLU) is a public university in West Liberty, West Virginia. It is West Virginia's oldest institution of higher education. It offers more than 70 undergraduate majors plus graduate programs, including a master's degree i ...

. Murphy was inducted into the

Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combina ...

in 1998.

Professional career

Murphy was signed by the

as an

in 1980. He broke his wrist in that 1980 training camp, but not before impressing the coaches enough in scrimmages that he was put on the injured reserve list. While recovering from his injury, he studied and learned the safety position thoroughly. When Johnnie Gray was injured in 1981, he started seven games at strong safety and nabbed the first three of his 20 lifetime interceptions. In 1982 he returned to special teams duty as the team made the playoffs for the only time in Murphy’s career. When Gray was shifted to free safety in 1983, Murphy became a regular at strong safety and would remain there the rest of his career. He was a steady player who hit with power, but lacked speed. His best years were those in which he played alongside fellow safety

Chuck Cecil Charles Douglas "Chuck" Cecil (born November 8, 1964) is an American football coach and former player in the National Football League (NFL). He is currently the safeties coach at the University of Arizona in Tucson, his alma mater. He previously ...

to form the toughest and hardest-hitting pair of safeties in the league. They were a popular hard-hitting duo that made them popular with the fans. Murphy led the team in tackles the last four years of his career. He played for the Packers from 1980 to 1991, starting 122 of 147 games at both safety positions. He finished his career with 20

interceptions In ball-playing competitive team sports, an interception or pick is a move by a player involving a pass of the ball—whether by foot or hand, depending on the rules of the sport—in which the ball is intended for a player of the same team b ...

, 11 sacks, and a

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 Ameri ...

References

External links

Green Bay Packers bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Mark 1958 births Living people American football safeties Green Bay Packers players West Liberty Hilltoppers football players Players of American football from Canton, Ohio Ed Block Courage Award recipients