Patrick Willis

There have been a lot of great linebackers. There haven't been many who were the best at it from the day they walked in until the day they walked out. Patrick Willis was. Seven seasons, seven Pro Bowls. Then his feet gave out and he went home, and the Hall of Fame called anyway.

He was born on January 25, 1985, in Bruceton, Tennessee, and the start was brutal. By 10 he was working full time in cotton fields. The family lived at the bottom of a hill with no running water until he was 8, and he and his siblings hauled buckets of water down from their grandparents' house at the top. At 17, with an alcoholic father turning violent, he and his brothers and sister moved in with his high school basketball coach, Chris Finley, and his wife, Julie.

At Hollow Rock Bruceton Central he lettered in football, basketball and baseball and was nominated for Tennessee's Mr. Football as a lineman and as a back in the same season, the first player in state history to get both. Rivals called him a three star recruit. He picked Ole Miss over Memphis.

He got better every year in Oxford. As a senior in 2006 he led the SEC in tackles again, was a consensus All American and SEC Defensive Player of the Year, and won the Butkus Award and the Jack Lambert Award. That same year his brother Detris drowned while swimming with friends.

Then he ran a 4.56 forty at the Combine, and the 49ers took him 11th overall in 2007. Mike Singletary coached him directly, and Willis went to work in the middle of the 3 4 defense.

His rookie year was ridiculous. Eleven tackles and a forced fumble in his first game, a 20 to 17 win over Arizona. He held Adrian Peterson's Vikings in check. In overtime at Arizona he ran down Sean Morey from behind to save the game. He made 20 tackles and 2 sacks against Tampa Bay. He led the whole league with 174 tackles and was Defensive Rookie of the Year, first team All Pro and a Pro Bowler, the first 49ers defensive rookie in the Pro Bowl since Ronnie Lott.

He kept it going on bad teams. An 86 yard interception return for a touchdown against Seattle in 2008. Another league leading 152 tackles in 2009, a first team All Pro vote from 49 of 50 voters, and the pro Butkus Award. A career high 6 sacks in 2010, playing through a broken hand.

When Jim Harbaugh arrived in 2011, Willis finally had a winner around him. That defense went until week 16 without allowing a rushing touchdown, an NFL record, and the 49ers went 13 and 3. The next year they went to Super Bowl XLVII, where Willis made 10 tackles in the 34 to 31 loss to Baltimore.

He made his seventh straight Pro Bowl after the 2013 season. In 2014 a toe that had bothered him for years finally wouldn't let him play anymore. He had surgery that November, and on March 10, 2015, he retired at 30. He finished with 950 tackles, 20.5 sacks, 8 interceptions and 16 forced fumbles, all as a 49er.

He was named to the NFL's All Decade team for the 2010s, and the 49ers put him in their Hall of Fame in 2021. On February 8, 2024, his old teammate Bryant Young knocked on his door to tell him he was going to Canton.

On August 3, 2024, he was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He talked about carrying those buckets up the hill as a kid, and about the last play of his career. It's not how long you play, he told everybody, it's how impactful you are.

Linebackers don't get game winning moments the way quarterbacks do, so Willis made his own. In overtime at Arizona as a rookie, Sean Morey had a 62 yard catch and run going, and Willis ran him down from behind. The 49ers won 37 to 31.

When the 49ers finally got to the playoffs, he was everywhere. Twenty nine tackles and a sack in the 2012 postseason, ten of those tackles in the Super Bowl. In eight career playoff games he had 71 tackles.

And the biggest thing he did was every week, the whole year. The 2011 defense didn't allow a rushing touchdown until week 16. That doesn't happen without a linebacker who gets to every ball carrier.