Willie Davis

Willie Delford Davis (July 24, 1934 – April 15, 2020) was an American professional football player who played defensive end in the NFL. He played college football at Grambling State University for the Tigers, playing both offensive tackle and defensive end. The Cleveland Browns selected him with the 181st pick in the 1956 NFL draft, but his career didn’t begin until the 1958 season because he served in the U.S. Army. Davis wore number 77 for the Browns, playing multiple positions on both offense and defense, before being traded to the Green Bay Packers in 1960.

With the Packers, Davis switched to number 87 and was moved permanently to defensive end by coach Vince Lombardi. Over ten seasons, he anchored the defensive line, playing 138 consecutive regular-season games and 162 total regular-season games in his NFL career. He was part of all five of Lombardi’s NFL championship teams and played in Super Bowls I and II. Davis earned All-Pro honors five times (1962, 1964–1967) and was selected to the Pro Bowl five times (1963–1967).

Although tackles and sacks were not official stats during his era, researcher John Turney estimates Davis had over 100 sacks in his Packers career—possibly more than 120—including at least 40 from 1963 to 1965. Davis himself claimed he averaged in the “teens” in sacks per season and once had 25 in a single year. He also recovered 22 opponent fumbles for the Packers, a team record that still stands more than five decades later.

During his early Packers years, Davis lived at the Hotel Northland. He often recalled how, on the morning of the Ice Bowl, a wake-up call from the front desk announced the time and that the temperature was 17 degrees below zero. Davis also helped foster Lombardi’s culture of inclusion by intentionally taking a leadership role, inviting teammates who had never played on an integrated team or eaten with an African American to share meals, ensuring they adjusted comfortably.

After football, Davis worked as a color commentator on NBC’s NFL telecasts in the early 1970s. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981. In 1986, he was named the Walter Camp Man of the Year, and in 1987 he received the Career Achievement Award from the NFL Alumni. He was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1988.

The Sporting News ranked him number 69 on its list of the 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, and The Athletic listed him as the 91st greatest player of all time in 2021. Davis was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1968. He served on the boards of Marquette University, Alliance Bank, Dow Chemical (1988–2006), Johnson Controls (1991–2006), K-Mart, LA Gear, Manpower (2001–2020), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1999–2020), MGM Mirage, Rally’s Inc., Sara Lee (1983–2020), Schlitz Brewing, and WICOR Inc. He was president of All-Pro Broadcasting, which has operated radio stations KHTI, KATY-FM, WLDB-FM, WLUM-FM, and WZTI since 1976. In 1989, he was a finalist for the position of NFL Commissioner.

Davis’s son, Duane Davis, is an actor known for his role as “Featherstone” in Necessary Roughness. His daughter, Lori Davis, is a lawyer specializing in marijuana legislation within the Los Angeles children’s court system. His grandson, Wyatt Davis, was an All-American guard at Ohio State University and now plays for the New York Giants. His granddaughter, Harley Ann Zepeda, won the titles of Miss Los Angeles County United States 2024 and Miss Wisconsin United States 2024. The Packers honored his retirement with a Willie Davis Day on December 21, 1969, and he later served on the team’s Board of Directors. After a month-long hospitalization for kidney failure, Davis died on April 15, 2020, at age 85. During the 2020 season, the Packers wore a helmet decal featuring his name and number in his honor.