FOOTBALL

Rockford’s greatest football players No. 6: Ira Matthews

Alex Gary
Ira Matthews (33) breaks a tackle against Belvidere during East's undefeated state champion season in 1974. Matthews also was the punt returner and kick returner for the Oakland Raiders when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1981 Super Bowl.

A football career that eventually carried Ira Matthews from the streets of Rockford to a Super Bowl title nearly ended before it began.

East High School was undefeated on the freshman and sophomore levels with Mathews playing defensive back and running back. The first couple of weeks of practice of his junior year in 1973, he wasn’t being used much on offense.

“I got one carry during camp,” Matthews recalled of the competition for carries with fellow backs Joe Black and Russell Pope.

“My dad came to practice and I started to cry. ‘I’m not getting the ball,’” Matthews said. The response he received was perhaps the best life lesson ever given to him by his dad, Ira Matthews Sr., who was a Golden Gloves boxer in the late 1930s.

“Well, you can quit and let this go to waste,” he remembered his father saying, “but when you are a Black man in America, you never want to get labeled a liar, a cheater or a quitter. Once you get that label, you can’t get rid of it. Just stick with it and when you do get the ball, show them what you can do.”

The first week of the 1973 season, Matthews and the E-Rabs faced Freeport, which featured future Pretzels coach Cal Cummins, who would go on to start at Iowa State, Jim Luedeking, who played at Northern Illinois University, Stephen Kaiser who played at Dartmouth and three future Eastern Illinois players in Dave Babcock, Jim Spangler and Jim Spielman.

In the first half, Matthews only had one carry for three yards and the E-Rabs trailed 14-13.

“At halftime, Stuart (Walker) stood up and said something like, ‘We need to give Ira the ball,’ and that wasn’t like Stuart,” Matthews said. Walker, who played defensive end and linebacker for the E-Rabs and was No. 11 on our list of the 25 greatest football players of the past 75 years, grew up in the same neighborhood as Matthews and knew his ability.

In a nine-minute stretch in the second half, Matthews scored on runs of 31 and 10 yards and caught a 61-yard touchdown pass from Dean Schlueter in a 33-21 win in Freeport. Matthews gained 133 yards rushing and receiving on just eight touches — five carries and three receptions.

Matthews, selected as the sixth-greatest football player in Rockford-area history, had established himself but he still had to share the ball. Pope, who would go on to play defensive back and running back at Purdue and get NFL and USFL tryouts with three teams, led the E-Rabs in rushing in 1973 with 893 yards on 125 carries. Matthews gained 418 yards on 70 carries and another 238 yards receiving on 14 catches.

In 1974, Pope injured his knee early in the year and rushed for just 709 yards in East’s 13-0 season. Matthews got more action, but the leading rusher was Joe Black with 851 yards. Matthews had 817 yards on just 98 carries.

But Matthews listened to his dad and showed people what he could do when he did get the ball. Over those 22 games, he scored touchdowns on 14 of his 168 carries for East and had eight TD receptions out of his 38 career catches. He averaged 7.4 yards a run over the two seasons and 17.4 yards per catch.

He also had one touchdown each on an interception return, kickoff return and punt return.

East’s constellation of stars — four players would go on to play Division 1 college football and another would make his college’s Hall of Fame in Division 2 — drew college recruiters from all over. Matthews zeroed in on Wisconsin right away, but that didn’t keep him from enjoying the process.

“Me and Stuart, we must have gone on 20 recruiting trips,” Matthews said. “We went all over. Arizona, California, you name it. We got invited to go to Tulane. We’d never heard of Tulane. We got out a map and found out it was in New Orleans and it was Mardi Gras.

“That was a fun weekend.”

Originally, Walker, Matthews and East star lineman George Wojtowicz were going to go to Wisconsin as a package. Shortly before signing their letters of intent, Walker backed out. He ended up going to Colorado. Still, Wojtowicz and Matthews took their talents to Madison where they had to get used to a new feeling — losing.

“The Big 10 back then was the Big Two (Ohio State and Michigan) and the Little Eight,” Matthews said. “Our freshman year we opened against Michigan and they kicked our (butts). Me and George were sitting on the sidelines crying. We never lost in high school.”

Over his four years, the Badgers would go 19-22-3. Standing only 5-8 and weighing 175 pounds, the Badgers used him like East — returning kicks, catching passes and occasionally running the ball. In four years, he gained 1,640 yards rushing on 325 carries, another 628 yards on 49 catches and had another 1,432 yards on punt and kickoff returns.

Matthews led the NCAA in punt return average in 1978 with 16.9 yards per return and in punt return touchdowns with three. In total, he scored 16 touchdowns in college.

He also developed a fun rivalry with Pope, who played against him at Purdue.

“The first two years, they used him as a defensive back and I’d hear him on the field saying to his guys, ‘Don’t give him (anything)’” Matthews said. “Then they moved him to running back and I’d be out there yelling to my guys, ‘Don’t give him (anything)!’”

The Raiders picked Matthews in the sixth round of the 1979 NFL draft. His fellow East teammates, Walker and Jerry Holloway, were taken in later rounds. Pope was signed as a free agent. Of the four, Matthews was the only one to appear in a regular season game.

He played 41 games for the Raiders over three seasons as a kick return specialist. He was the punt and kickoff returner for the 1980 Raiders who went on to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1981 Super Bowl.

“I played with (Gene) Upshaw, (Art) Shell, Snake (Ken Stabler), Ghost (Dave Casper), (Jack) Tatum. That team was the real deal and we had the same camaraderie that we had back at East,” Matthews said. “Raider for life.”

In 1981, Matthews got hurt and the Raiders traded him in the offseason to Green Bay, where he was supposed to team with John Jefferson and James Lofton. He injured his hamstring and never appeared for the Packers. He was out of the league at age 25.

Matthews did a lot of different things after football — logistics, sales, several years in the music business. Nothing ever paid as good as football, but he’s gotten along OK and lives in Houston. He usually makes an annual trip through St. Louis to see Holloway and through Rockford to go to Wisconsin alumni events. That was canceled this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, like many ex-NFL players, he’s waiting on his portion of the concussion lawsuit settlement from 2017. When asked how many big hits he took as a kick returner, he said that wasn’t the problem.

“It was the two-a-days, man,” Matthews said of the common schedule of practicing twice in a day to get in shape. That was outlawed in 2011. “You’d do that for six, seven weeks. It was brutal. I saw lots of guys just take their pads off and walk off the field after going through that for a week.”

Still, he has no regrets.

“I’ve been blessed, man,” Matthews said. “Life has its ups and downs. It’s like this pandemic. You make the best of things. I never thought I’d get to the league. The door opened for me and I got four years (in the NFL).”

Alex Gary is a freelance correspondent.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

The Rockford Register Star is running a daily retrospective on the greatest area athletes of the past 75 years in every IHSA sport fielded by local high schools.

We recently ran separate stories on the 10 greatest high school football games and girls and boys basketball games.

All of the greatest games and greatest athletes are chosen by Matt Trowbridge, who has covered area high school sports for 30 years, and NIC-10 History Book founder Alex Gary, with input from other area experts and fans.

Ira Matthews was also a track star at East.