Why it’s time for Bills to add interceptions leader Butch Byrd to Wall of Fame

Lance Alworth started chuckling before the question was finished.

“I’m laughing because I remember playing against him, how tough he was and how much fun it was,” the hall-of-fame receiver said.

“He should be on the all-world team. I don’t know why he isn’t on that wall, but I’ll take him.”

Alworth was on the phone to talk about cornerback Butch Byrd not being on the Buffalo Bills’ Wall of Fame despite intercepting the most passes in club history, a record Byrd has held for 55 years.

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Byrd’s omission has been a mystery. He started for the Bills’ back-to-back AFL championship teams, was selected for five All-Star Games and was named All-AFL three times. He intercepted 40 career passes.

Sports Illustrated’s 1966 football preview issue called Byrd “a gifted punt-return man and one of the meanest tacklers around.”

In 1970, the Pro Football Hall of Fame voted Byrd second-team all-time AFL. In 2008, he was inducted into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. In 2009, he and Nate Odomes were named cornerbacks for the Bills’ 50th anniversary team.

“I’ve hollered this. I’ve echoed this,” Byrd’s cornerback partner Booker Edgerson said. “For 10 years, I’ve asked, ‘Why isn’t Butch on the wall?’ It’s puzzling.”

No one can fathom any friction between Byrd and Bills founder Ralph Wilson. That’s what kept running back Cookie Gilchrist and coach Lou Saban off the Wall of Fame until after Wilson’s death.

Byrd, 80, struggles to rationalize his absence.

“I was invited to the ceremony when Mike Stratton, who was my roommate for five or six of the years we played together, got on the wall” in 1994, Byrd said. “I ran into Ralph and he looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to be up there next.’ I felt good about that, but it never happened.

“Then we had a celebration for the 50th anniversary team, and I was chosen as one of the top ballplayers. Wilson was handing out the trophies, a handsome trophy. But when he got to me, he couldn’t remember my name.”

The Bills this year are not planning to add a 32nd entry to the Wall of Fame.

Gilchrist was the Wall of Fame’s last addition in 2017. The selection committee has not met since.

The Bills held off in 2018, choosing to give Thurman Thomas’ jersey retirement the lone spotlight and again in 2019 because the NFL orchestrated a league-wide, season-long centennial celebration. The Bills’ NFL100 event was a halftime wedding ceremony that featured Bills alumni such as Jim Kelly walking the bride to the altar and Kyle Williams officiating.

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COVID-19 eliminated attendance and special ceremonies for 2020, and uncertainties about continued attendance restrictions kept the team from staging any events last year.

The honorees stand at 23 players, three administrators, two coaches, a trainer, a broadcaster and the 12th Man.

“When I look at the defensive backs who are on the wall and I compare my numbers to their numbers, it’s not even close,” Byrd said. “They’re all good players, but not as good as me. Let me be honest with you.”

He punctuated his comment with laughter, but his stats are seriously striking.

Byrd’s 40 regular-season interceptions came in 98 games. He returned five for touchdowns, tied with Tom Janik and Nate Clements for that team record.

Tony Greene came closest to Byrd’s haul with 37 interceptions, but he needed 30 more games. Byrd intercepted a pass every 0.41 games, a shade behind only Janik, who snagged 21 in 49 games (0.43).

The best way for Alworth to explain Byrd’s greatness came via arguments with San Diego Chargers coach Sid Gillman each time they prepared to play the Bills’ stacked defensive backfield.

“Butch Byrd was probably one of the best I ever had to play against,” Alworth said. “Sid Gillman, who was a legend when it came to passing offense, would say, ‘Lance, we don’t want you to go against him.’ I was, like, ‘No, no, no. I’ve got to play against him. I want to play against the best.’

“So that’s how much the Chargers thought of him. They didn’t want me to go one-on-one with Butch Byrd, and I had to fight them to do it.”

Alworth had a career record of 7-1-2 against Buffalo. He caught 46 passes for 946 yards and seven touchdowns.

But Buffalo’s 1964 and 1965 AFL championship victories came against San Diego. Byrd had an interception in each game and returned a punt 74 yards for a touchdown in the encore.

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Alworth, No. 55 on The Athletic’s NFL 100 rundown last year, had problems with the 6-foot, 211-pound Byrd’s bump-and-run jostling.

“He would get right on top of you and could run with you,” said Alworth, who played nine seasons with the Chargers and two with the Dallas Cowboys. “He was quick, just such a great athlete. I had to give him a little more space because once he could get his hands on me, he was with me all the way.”

Byrd lined up to the quarterback’s left side, Edgerson to the right. Back then, quarterbacks were predisposed to throw to their dominant side, meaning fewer chances for Byrd.

Edgerson, however, is a Bills legend too, going on the Wall of Fame in 2010. When quarterbacks needed to avoid Edgerson’s side of the field, Byrd pounced.

“He was an aggressive individual,” said Edgerson, a starter for two years when Byrd arrived from Boston University as the 25th overall draft choice in 1964. “By me telling him how to do certain things gave him that confidence and made him even more aggressive. He would take chances. He would guess sometimes and mostly he was right.

“He studied the film and remembered the quarterback’s tendencies and how the receivers ran their routes. He got quite a few of his interceptions that way. He’d jump right on it.”

Byrd never missed a game over his career, playing seven seasons with the Bills. Buffalo traded him to the Denver Broncos in 1971 for a fifth-round draft choice that became journeyman guard Bob Penchion. A year later, Byrd retired.

The Westborough, Mass., resident climbed the management ranks — and relocated often — over nine years with the Chrysler Corporation and worked 22 years for Polaroid.

He’s a member of the Westborough Civic Club, is on the town’s diversity and inclusion committee and two years ago was on a panel to interview and recommend the police chief. Byrd served as president of the NFL Alumni Association’s New England chapter.

But he maintains a footprint in Western New York through close friends Edgerson, tight end Charley Ferguson and all-purpose back Ed Rutkowski.

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“When I come back to Buffalo at least once a year, it always comes up,” Byrd said. “I hope it happens, but it’s not as important as it used to be. I can’t lament year after year. Members of my family who would have been at the celebration have all passed.

“That’s the pinnacle of the achievements in football aside from Canton, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to feel sorry for myself.”

Either way, what’s right is right.

“Should’ve been a looooong time ago,” Edgerson said.

(Photo: Charles Aqua Viva / Getty Images)