Over the summer, I tried to contact former Arizona State players and coaches to ask them about Vontaze Burfict. It had been 10 years since the physical linebacker came to Tempe as the football program’s highest-rated prospect in the recruiting-service era. I wanted to find out what it had been like having Burfict as a teammate in Tempe.
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For the most part, this didn’t go well. One teammate texted: “Nothing but good things to say about Vontaze, but I’d prefer not to be featured in this story.” Three coaches and several others did not respond to messages. Then-head coach Dennis Erickson asked what angle I planned to take. When I told him I just wanted to look back on Burfict’s time at ASU, the good, bad and ugly, he didn’t respond.
I get it. Burfict — who this week drew a season-long suspension from the NFL for a helmet-to-helmet hit in Sunday’s win over the Colts — is a polarizing figure. Some think he plays football the way it was meant to be played, physical and violent. Others think he should never play the sport again. It’s hard to blame his former teammates and coaches for not wanting to be thrown into the debate.
In 2009, Burfict, a Corona (Calif.) Centennial High standout, had arrived in Tempe with great excitement. Recruiting service 247 Sports ranked him as a five-star prospect and as the nation’s No. 2 inside linebacker. Burfict initially committed to USC before flipping to the Sun Devils. Once his eligibility was secured, he was seen as a program changer.
“The joke I used to say was — and this will age myself a bit — but if Alvin Mack had come to life, it was Vontaze Burfict,” said Brandon Huffman, a national recruiting editor for 247 Sports, referring to the fictional, trash-talking linebacker from the 1993 movie “The Program.”
“And I said that when he was in high school — that was before he got to college and the NFL. His style of play, it was just like a real life Alvin Mack. He talked. He was mean and nasty. He was what you’d want a linebacker to be.”
Burfict played in Tempe for three seasons. He might have been at his best in his first, a no-doubt selection as Pac-10 Defensive Freshman of the Year. Burfict entered his sophomore season as an All-America candidate but didn’t even earn first-team all-conference. His junior season was known more for personal fouls than anything else, a reason Burfict went undrafted after leaving school.
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Former linebacker Brandon Magee — a close Burfict friend — told me not long ago that Burfict provided a nastiness the Sun Devils needed. “Everyone didn’t agree with the personal fouls, but to me, personally, he still brought us an edge,” Magee said. “People feared us.”
Defensive tackle Bo Moos agreed. He played with Burfict for all three of the linebacker’s years in Tempe. Moos was the one exception over the summer, the only former teammate who agreed to talk. I contacted him in June and we chatted for 20 minutes. Was the physical linebacker a good teammate? Were his actions a distraction?
Burfict, with ASU, pointing at USC’s Matt Barkley in 2011. (Norm Hall / Getty Images)
A portion of our conversation:
Burfict came in with a lot of hype. When did you realize that first season it was legit?
BM: See, on the field he was always standing behind me, right? So I would be tangled up with a guard and center and then I’d just hear a CRACK! and I’d look over and be like, “OK.” I never really got to see it except on film. He was a little sporadic. Obviously, it takes time, especially at that position, to know what you’re doing on each call but it almost didn’t matter. Just on instincts alone that first week he made so many plays, and he wasn’t afraid to jaw with veterans on the O-line. It was pretty clear right away: “OK, we’re lucky to have this guy.”
You mention the talking. If I remember correctly, he did a lot of that in practice, too.
The one thing that’s consistent with all of those great players — and you hear it at the NFL level as well — is work ethic. Work ethic was never an issue with Taze. He was almost one of those guys who needed to keep talking, I think, just to keep himself going. It was more of something, especially on the defensive side, where we were like, “This is a welcomed edition,” because we already had that swagger. He just took it to another level.
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There was also a lot of fighting in practice, and Burfict usually was right in the middle. I remember him standing on the sideline and firing a football into a scuffle. Was this a distraction?
We did fight during the Erickson years a lot. I always loved it. I’m fighting side by side with Taze. It was all of us. I don’t think he added more to it. If anything, I think he embraced that culture. Yeah, we got after each other quite a bit. I think, it’s anywhere — you play against each other enough, it’s bound to happen. You go three weeks against the same O-line, with the same calls, you’re just sick of each other.
Burfict committed 22 personal fouls in 37 college games. Obviously, a lot of those were legit, but how many do you think were based on reputation?
His freshman year, I think the ones he got were legitimate. He did have a lot of personal fouls, but on a couple occasions he got flagged for personal fouls and then the flag was picked up. Georgia was one of those. (In 2009), he got a personal foul because he pushed a ref. You can see it on YouTube still. He literally pushed a ref and the ref threw the flag and the situation was kind of in turmoil for a second. But then the ref realized, “OK, they were about to snap the ball. That’s my fault.” … Then I think when you go to his junior year in 2011 … it was totally a situation where it was reputation. They had their eyes on him.
The more criticism that came his way, the more pressure was put on Erickson to control Burfict, which may not have been possible. In the end, he didn’t seem like the same player.
One thing I think that hurt a lot his junior year was the loss of Brandon Magee. He was really close with Brandon (who suffered a season-ending injury in August), and when Brandon went down that hurt a lot. Some things had changed. We had a new D-line coach, so the way we played was a little different. I think all of those things contributed to that, but he definitely wasn’t making as many plays. He still had big games. He had a really good game at Illinois. We were playing well early in the year — and you can’t blame it on Taze — but we kind of all sunk together at the same time.
Was he a good teammate?
He was a great teammate, and I think that’s one of the ways he was most misunderstood. Let’s face it: He was always eligible. He never got in any trouble off the field. A lot of the criticism was based on the personal fouls. But it was like anytime the pads went on, you were unleashing the beast.
My last ASU memory of Burfict was in the 2011 Las Vegas Bowl. He hadn’t declared for the draft but everyone knew it was his last game. Erickson already had been fired. ASU had scored with 30 seconds left and Burfict ran out for the kickoff. I remember watching from the sideline — he ran down and just blew up this poor kid from Boise.
Some poor kid probably from Eagle, Idaho, who was just happy to be on the field, right? Yeah. I can see Taze telling our special-teams guy, “I want to be on kickoff.” And then our special-teams guy probably being like, “OK, go ahead.”
Burfict, 29, still returns to ASU. He was on the sideline for a game last season, but his name doesn’t come up often.
In a lower-level hallway of the football facility, ASU highlights standout players from each decade. In the 2010s, photos of Will Sutton, Marion Grice, D.J. Foster, Jaelen Strong, Alden Darby, Taylor Kelly and Carl Bradford are on the wall. But not Burfict.
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A special adviser to head coach Herm Edwards, Marvin Lewis probably knows him better than anybody in the program. It was Lewis who brought in Burfict after the linebacker went undrafted. Over seven seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, Burfict blossomed into one of the league’s more feared players, for reasons both good and bad. But according to a media-relations official, Lewis isn’t interested in discussing the linebacker, now with the Oakland Raiders. At least not at the moment.
Playing dirty comes with a price. According to The Athletic’s Vic Tafur, the NFL has suspended and fined Burfict 13 times in seven seasons. The linebacker’s actions have cost him north of $4 million. Burfict’s history of dirty play, the league said, contributed to his suspension, the longest for on-field conduct in NFL history. The linebacker plans to appeal.
From high school to college to the NFL, Burfict always has played the same way. He’s never apologized. It’s taken him to football’s highest level. It’s made him rich.
And it may take him out of the league.
(Top photo of Vontaze Burfict after his ejection from Sunday’s game at Indianapolis: Zach Bolinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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