Bear8 said:
RB65, youth must be served. Your personal experience notwithstanding, Weaver is roughly the same size as Butkus, but has tremendous speed. I don't know the number of tackles he's made alone and how many shared, but there has to be a ton. There's maybe a difference in the height and weight of Butkus' opponents and today's opponents. I recall that Merlin Olsen was a big man at 255 in the 60's. Today, playing the same position you'd better be 275+. The biggest guy around at that time was probably Roger Brown at about 320. Today, there are numerous guys in college and the NFL at that size. I don't mean to denigrate Butkus, but times and better health have passed that era by.
It is hard to compare players of different eras, but Weaver is a college player. What most of us remember about Butkus, due to the comparative lack of national college football TV coverage in Butkus's day, is more or less limited to his NFL career, where TV coverage for the NFL was more inclusive We need to wait until Weaver plays in the NFL for several years before making a judgment that Weaver is somehow the better player. He should not be in the conversation yet.
I love Weaver. His attitude, his nose for where the ball is going, and his ability to bring down runners with seemingly just getting a hand on them. The two previous years, I felt Kunasyk was a shade better linebacker. The two players were at least equal in my mind. Last year Kunasyk made more solo tackles than Weaver. The year before Kunasyk had 19 more tackles, and more for loss, and played only 9 games to Weaver's 12 games. Both Weaver and Kunasyk made tremendous improvement under Wilcox over the years they played at Cal. This year Weaver has been outstanding, even better than last year, save perhaps the Oregon game, where he had only 5 solos and 1 assist. But we can't judge much from one game. Sometimes a defender has to take on one or more blockers so a teammate can make the tackle, and that defender gets no credit. The defense in that game was more of a team effort.
I mostly saw Butkus in the NFL and on TV. While the skill and strength of a Weaver to bring down a runner by just grabbing him with a hand or an arm is very impressive, Butkus was different. He didn't need his hands to tackle, he hit the runner and absorbed all the runner's momentum, and then drove him backward. Much of the time he used his hands and arms, just for extra emphasis, to lift the runner off the ground, and hurl him backward, or slam him to the ground. I'd say Weaver is more of a finesse player, and Butkus was a brute force kind of player. But Butkus was more than that. He typified brute force. Butkus got better in the NFL, and got better over the years. I look forward to seeing Weaver (and Kunasyk as well) play in the NFL for many years, with few injuries. Maybe one or both will prove to be as good as Butkus was. Cal has never had two linebackers as good as Weaver and Kunasyk on the same team in my memory, at least.
