Defensive back Chuck Shonta was still laying on the Fenway Park turf when Cookie Gilchrist approached the Patriots huddle.
Gilchrist just knocked out Shonta with a devastating block, and if Boston didn’t get the message, he wanted to make it clear.
“Which one of you motherf—–s is next?”
If Gilchrist’s teammates weren’t around to corroborate it, a tale about a player brazen enough to talk trash to the opponent before their teammate was peeled off the ground might seem facetious. But much of Gilchrist’s life is Paul Bunyan-esque, with a magnifying glass needed to sift through fact and myth.
Eleven years before O.J. Simpson won the 1973 NFL MVP, 29 years before Thurman Thomas managed it and nearly 35 years before Josh Allen was born, Gilchrist was the first Buffalo Bills MVP. He was also the franchise’s first unicorn.
At 6-foot-3, 251 pounds, Gilchrist was bigger than most offensive linemen during his era. And he used the size to bludgeon opponents into submission.
Teammates have called him the greatest football player who ever lived. Gilchrist rubbed elbows with Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell and other titans of the civil rights era and refused to bend on his convictions, while also being a complex man who frayed relationships easily and bungled business investments.
He warred with coaches and owners. Gilchrist disputed stories that he refused induction into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame over a money dispute, but his fractured relationship with Bills founder Ralph C. Wilson meant Gilchrist wasn’t placed on the team’s Wall of Fame until 2017, after both men died.
Gilchrist’s American career was dominant, but six years is not typically long enough to be considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Having died in 2011, Gilchrist’s stories are left to those old enough to remember him, but that’s decreasing population and his tales are likely to fall deeper into myth.
“He was the best at that time,” Bills Wall of Fame cornerback Booker Edgerson told GNN Sports in a 2022 interview. “If you had to put him in perspective, today, he would still be the best. When you’re good, you’re good.”
Gilchrist’s fights with football executives began before he graduated high school. The grandson of slaves with the birth name of Carlton, Gilchrist starred for Har-Brack High School in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, leading his team to the W.P.I.A.L co-championship as a junior in 1953.
So dominant was Gilchrist that Cleveland Browns owner and coach Paul Brown signed him to a contract. Brown likely knew it was illegal to sign a high school player and then reneged on a promise that Gilchrist would make the team’s final roster.
It was the start of a lifelong grudge against Brown that served as bookends to his career. When Brown’s Cincinnati Bengals selected Gilchrist in the 1968 expansion draft, he retired rather than play for Brown.
Signing with the Browns torpedoed his high school and college eligibility, forcing a child to make an adult life in Canada. He started with the Ontario Rugby Football Union in 1954 and eventually moved to the Canadian Football League, spending seven years in Canada.
When Gilchrist signed with the Bills in 1962, he was their backup plan. They drafted Syracuse Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis with their top pick in the AFL draft, but he spurned Buffalo for Cleveland, the NFL team that selected him.
Gilchrist was the AFL MVP in his first season, and led the league in rushing touchdowns his first four seasons and yards rushing in two of his first three years. He ran for 1,096 yards in 14 games in 1962, becoming the first 1,000-yard rusher in the AFL.
Serving as the team’s placekicker in 1962, Gilchrist thought he could play linebacker also, but demanded two salaries to do so. He ran with power and was a steam-rolling blocker who thrived on intimidating opponents and pounding on them until they grew weary of tackling him.
“I ran directly at them with all the force I could generate to teach a lesson I did not want them to forget,” Gilchrist said in his book, The Cookie That Did Not Crumble. “I hoped the punishment I dished out would become a deterrent for other players who would consider trying to tackle me.”
That spilled over into his teammates, who were a little afraid of Gilchrist but had even more respect for him. Gilchrist showed a desire to win and was all business when it came to football.
After starting 9-0 to start the run to 1964 to the AFL championship, the Bills lost a 36-28 game to the Patriots and Gilchrist walked out, frustrated quarterback Jack Kemp was giving him the ball enough. Coach Lou Saban placed Gilchrist on waivers, but they ultimately reconciled and he returned to the team.
And the next time they played the Patriots and needed a win to secure a spot in the AFL championship game, it was Gilchrist who spoke up before the game.
“It was really quiet, so Cookie got up and said, ‘If we lose this game, I’m going to beat the s— out of everybody in this room,’” Former Bills linebacker Paul Maguire said. And he turned to 277-pound defensive tackle Jim Dunaway. “‘Except you, Dunaway. Because I know I can’t beat you up.’ We went out and beat the hell out of New England because we were more afraid of Cookie Gilchrist.”
Gilchrist didn’t stop talking when he hit the field. It wasn’t enough for Gilchrist to plaster an opponent, he had to let them know that if they got up, he was going to do it again.
“When he came into the game, he let you know that he was going to run you over,” Chiefs Hall of Fame linebacker Bobby Bell recalled. “… He’s not going to dodge you. He likes to run over you. If you tackle him, maybe he’ll say, ‘Oh, you got me that time. But get ready for the next time. I’m coming right at you.’ Every time I played him, he was always talking, letting us know that was going to really knock you out.”
His willingness to gab off the field sometimes created opportunities for others, but ran him afoul of authority figures at the same time. In 1965, the AFL All-Star game was slated to be played in New Orleans six months after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to end racial segregation.
Whether it was an attempt to hail taxis at the airport, dine in restaurants or walk around the city without confrontation, the league’s Black players were met with discrimination. Bell attempted to eat in the hotel dining room and stood there for 20 minutes while white people around him were served first and was eventually told he could be served if he ate in his room.
Gilchrist, along with Chargers defensive lineman Ernie Ladd, decided that if Black players weren’t welcome in New Orleans then they should boycott the game. All Black players decided to boycott and white players joined in solidarity, with the AFL eventually moving the game to Houston.
Afterwards, Gilchrist felt the AFL blackballed him over his role in the boycott. Whether it was his walkout during the 1964 season or the boycott, Gilchrist was traded a month later to the Broncos, despite rushing for 122 yards on 16 attempts to help the Bills to the AFL championship.
“It wasn’t a good marriage for him in Buffalo,” Pro Football Hall of Fame executive director Joe Horrigan said. “It’s been romanticized since because he was such a great player that the fans, even the ones that didn’t get to see him play, went with it. He became very bitter, a bit of a recluse.”
His football career was a constant clash with owners, frequently feeling he wasn’t paid his share. Between the CFL and AFL, Gilchrist made 10 consecutive all-star teams, but did so with six teams.
“If anybody stands up against the rules that were made, it rubs people the wrong way,” Bell said. “And some people have to be strong enough to expand that. I mean to take that and go along with it and say, ‘Hey, this is where it is and we’re standing up for it.’ Cookie was outspoken and a lot of people didn’t like it.”
After being traded by the Bills, Gilchrist ran for 954 yards and six touchdowns for the Broncos in 1965. He spent 1966 with the Dolphins and one game back with the Broncos in 1967 before his battering-ram style took its toll.
Ailing knees officially led to the end of his football career, but Gilchrist began experiencing symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy by 1971, 40 years before his death and was posthumously diagnosed with stage four CTE. His post-playing career was a hodgepodge of different endeavors and attempts to find financial success.
He tried acting but it didn’t take, neither did a variety of business ventures during and after his football career. He claimed to have turned down a stake in a fledgling restaurant chain called KFC and once tried to sell personalized winter gear outside of War Memorial Stadium prior to the 1964 AFL championship game, only for it to be a balmy 43 degrees, leaving him with a nearly full inventory.
One of the founders of NFL Films, Steve Sabol, was interested in creating a documentary about Gilchrist at one time. But it eventually fell through when Gilchrist allegedly wanted a six-figure salary.
He was invited to Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential inauguration in 1964 and worked for Richard Nxion’s administration as a recruiter for ACTION — a precursor for the Peace Corps — but used travel vouchers for personal travel and complained about the organization not doing enough to recruit Black people.
Before Gilchrist died, Edgerson, who shared an apartment with him on Humboldt Parkway while teammates with the Bills went to visit him in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t outraged anymore, instead he was calm and content with the life he lived.
“We would talk about certain things and I said, ‘Cookie, you got to understand that ain’t the way people look at it,’” Edgerson said. “Booker, he said, ‘This is the way I see it. This is my life and I have to live it my way as best as I can.’
“There’s a lot of things that we talked about that I didn’t agree with. But then again, there’s a lot of things that I didn’t agree with my mother and father, my sister, my brother, about either, but that didn’t stop me from loving them.”