Last Living Member of Chicago Bears 1946 Championship Team Has Died

Chicago Bears great Ed Sprinkle, called “the greatest pass rusher I’ve ever seen” by none other than George Halas, died in Palos Heights last week.

The last living member of the Chicago Bears 1946 Championship team, Sprinkle passed away on July 28 at the age of 90.

A defensive end, Sprinkle earned his nickname “the Claw” by flattening quarterbacks with his powerful forearm — a move now barred in the NFL. Sprinkle, who wore No. 7, played for the Bears from 1944 to 1955, going to four Pro Bowls. He was named All Pro seven times and is on the NFL’s all-decade team for the 1940s.

“He was a real rough-and-tumble guy who made a name for himself around the league with just how competitive a player he was,” said Bears Chairman George McCaskey on ChicagoBears.com.

Sprinkle played in an era without facemasks and was dubbed the “meanest man in football” in a Collier’s magazine article in which he explained his tactics.

“If somebody gets an unintentional whack in the nose now and then — well, that’s football,” George Halas told Collier’s.

Hall of Fame fullback Hugh McElhenny, of the San Francisco 49ers, told The New York Times in 1985 that Sprinkle’s tackles were quite memorable.

“Sprinkle would drive you 10 yards out of bounds and the official would be taking the ball away from you, but Sprinkle would still be choking you,” McElhenny said.

Sprinkle said he was no different than any of the other guys on the football field in that era.

“I don’t know where it started. I hit guys. I never stood around. Sometimes they interpreted that as being mean instead of being tough,” Sprinkle told the Palos Regional News in 2012. “Halas tried to defend me. He said I wasn’t a dirty player. I was mean as everyone out there.”

In the offseason, he ran a strawberry farm and worked for Inland Steel.

He was inducted into the Chicago Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

“He loved playing football and his whole career he never went to another football team,” said his daughter Susan Withers.

After football, Sprinkle was in the carpeting and tile business. He coached with the New York Titans in 1962, the team that would later become the New York Jets.

Sprinkle’s dad was a Texas farmer and his mom was a schoolteacher. He was born on Sept. 3, 1923 in Tuscola, TX. His senior class in high school had just 13 students, and he was one of only two boys.

His mom encouraged him to attend college, and he went to Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, where he started playing football.

“She wanted to make sure I went to college. It was a good thing for me, otherwise I’d have ended up working on a farm,” Sprinkle said in a feature story published for his 89th birthday in his hometown newspaper.

He attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and then was lured to the Chicago Bears. He signed a contract that paid him $200 a game.

His wife Marian passed away in 2003. Sprinkle is survived by his daughter, Susan, and his sons Alan and Steven, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Sprinkle wore his NFL Championship ring every day.