Former Bears fullback Matt Suhey, who played on their 1985 championship team, died Sunday at 68, the team confirmed. He scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl XX on an 11-yard run as they rolled to a 46-10 win to capture the only Lombardi Trophy in franchise history.
Suhey had appeared to be in good health lately, and his passing was a surprise to many of his friends.
“It was out of the blue,” former Bears safety Gary Fencik said. “I was scheduling a breakfast with Matt for this week, so I was shocked.
“It’s shocking, but it’s just reality. Some of my teammates are passing away. We’re no longer invincible. I think of Steve McMichael and now Matt.”
McMichael, a Hall of Famer, battled ALS for several years before dying in 2025.
Suhey played a decade with the Bears in the 1980s, including eight years as the lead blocker for Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton. He was a key piece during their best run in modern history with five consecutive playoff appearances from 1984 through ’88.
An iconic photo showed Payton and Suhey at a practice in the spring of 1985 in which Suhey is lined up for a play and Payton is pulling his shorts down from behind with a big smile on his face.
Former Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander wrote that they were “best buds” and, “Their affection for each other would become clearest when Payton was dying of liver cancer and Suhey was there to soothe his friend and run interference for him against the swarming media horde.” Payton also was the godfather of one of Suhey’s sons.
Payton also was the godfather of one of Suhey’s sons, and Suhey remained close with the Payton family after Walter’s death in 1999.
Several who knew Suhey described him not only as a classic, hardnosed player, but a warm, upbeat personality.
“We butted heads every day at practice, but he was such a class guy,” Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary said. “He was everything that you talk about in America about being a person that was doing his job every day, lunch-pail type of guy and really had the emotional intelligence to know how to deal with every kind of person —never met a bad person.
“I never really saw him have an issue with another teammate. If somebody got a good hit on him, he’d say, ‘Hey man, good hit,’ and try to knock the crap out of you on the next play.”
Suhey also worked at the Chicago Board of Trade in offseasons and became a full-time trader and owned a bottled water company after he retired from the NFL.
“I remember him putting up a satellite during training camp in Platteville, [Wis.], and I wasn’t sure what it was,” Fencik said with a laugh. “I thought he was looking for entertainment, but he was actually trading. I said, ‘Matt, you’ve got to be the only guy in the NFL doing this.’ Just amazing.”
The Bears drafted Suhey out of Penn State in the second round in 1980 and he went on to become one of their most celebrated players.
He played in every game as a rookie and was an incredibly reliable and durable player and appeared in 148 of a possible 152 games. He finished with 2,946 yards rushing and 20 touchdown runs, as well as 260 catches for 2,113 yards and five touchdowns.
The Sun-Times ranked him No. 78 in its 100 Greatest Bears of All Time for their 100th season in 2019.
“When I go to Chicago, Matt Suhey comes to my mind because I want to see his smile and hear him teasing me about something,” Singletary said. “I’m really, really going to miss that light.”