Wildman Remembered : Although Doug Atkins Was Not Exactly a Saint, He’s Soon To Be in New Orleans’ Hall of Fame

NEW ORLEANS â€”  By the time Doug Atkins arrived at the New Orleans Saints in 1967, he was considered an old man at 37. And he was surrounded by rookies, misfits and marginal talent on a bungling first-year expansion team.

Thanks to his glory days with the Chicago Bears, he is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Atkins closed out his career in New Orleans, playing with aching ankles, blown out knees and a pain-wracked body. Yet he still terrorized opponents--and teammates--in his final three years, and the Saints will induct him into their own hall of fame this summer.

“Doug had a way of making people apprehensive,� said Warren Ariail, the Saints’ trainer in 1968-69. “He was so big and so strong and when he wanted to do something he did it. Johnny Unitas told me one time Doug was the only player he was afraid of. Dick Butkus said the same thing. Now if you can imagine Dick Butkus being afraid of someone, you get an idea of how Doug affected people.�

At 6-foot-8, 280 pounds, Atkins was a giant in those days before weight lifting and oversized linemen. In his declining years, he still played well enough to earn second team all-league honors at 38.

Atkins was a wildman on the field, big and strong enough to pick up offensive lineman and literally toss them aside.

There are no records of Atkins’ sacks, because that statistic wasn’t kept until 1982. The record for a single season is 22.

“When I was with the Bears, there were a few years I might have had 25 or so,� Atkins said. “It was just playing the position, nothing special in those days.�

Steve Stonebreaker, a Saints teammate, called Atkins a benchmark player--a model for everyone else who plays the position.

“His performance level never dropped off, his endurance level was the only thing that did,� Stonebreaker said. “He wasn’t the player he was when he was 28, 29, but even in the twilight of his career he was a hell of a lot better than most of the other players he played against.�

It was not just on the field that Atkins cut a giant swath. He rumbled around training camps--armed and accompanied by his pit bull Rebel--through bars, and over anyone who got in his way.

Atkins would arrive at training camp each summer packing two .44-caliber Magnums, several derringers and a shotgun. Sometimes, when the Saints trained in San Diego, he fired his shotgun at destroyers cruising off the coast, claiming that coach George Allen was spying on the team from the ships.

He once silenced some noisy rookies in the room above him by firing a gun into the overhang outside their window.

“I needed my sleep,� Atkins said. “I was old. I came in at curfew and needed to rest up. They wanted to keep that music playing so I just quieted them down.�

Atkins was no fan of rock ‘n’ roll. His first day in the Saints locker room, he turned off a player’s radio that was tuned to a top 40 station.

“He said, ‘We’re going to listen to American music here because we’re all Americans,�’ Ariail remembered. “Then he put on a Johnny Cash song and everybody listened to country and western the rest of the years. There weren’t any complaints.�

Rebel was Atkins’ constant companion, jogging with him and sleeping in his locker during practice. He even went with Atkins to a little French Quarter bar.

“Doug would sit on one stool and Rebel would sit on another and they would get drunk together,� Ariail said.

Even after Atkins decided he was tired of looking at his picture on the wall of the bar and shot it down, he and Rebel were welcome.

“He liked to drink, but I never saw it bother him,� said Joe Impastato, who was his regular waiter at a French Quarter restaurant where Atkins dined after Saints games. “I’d ice down a quart of gin for his martinis and about a half-dozen bottles of beer, then he’d have a few Grand Marniers and walk out of there perfectly straight.�

Atkins, 65, doesn’t drink much these days. He had a martini at Christmas and didn’t really like the taste. Quite a change for a man who admits to regularly drinking a quart-and-a-half of them at a sitting.

His weight is back down from 314 pounds to his old game-weight of 280. Since leaving the NFL, Atkins has had a dozen jobs from driving a beer truck to selling coffins and working in a county tax department.

He is now retired, and although he is not wealthy, he said he is not destitute.

His knees, after 11 operations during his career and a lot of hard running on and off the field, are shot.

“The doctor tells me they should be replaced, but I can’t afford that, so I just go easy on them,� Atkins said.

He still hears from people who remember his playing days. And he still hears stories told about his off-the-field activities.

“A lot of those stories have grown,� Atkins said. “I think people just like to add to them. Like the stories about the guns. You know, I didn’t even always have live ammunition in those guns. A lot of times I was firing blanks.�