Nick Buoniconti’s first football injury happened before he even reached the playing field. Racing off to practice with Springfield’s South End Spitfires as an 8-year-old, he tripped over the shoulder pads he was carrying, broke an arm, and was out the rest of the year.
And the next season? “No one scored a point against us all year,” he told the Globe’s Will McDonough in 1966. “I played middle linebacker right from the start and I’ve been there ever since.”
A Pro Football Hall of Famer, and an AFL All-Star for the Boston Patriots in the 1960s, Mr. Buoniconti went on to help lead the Miami Dolphins to a pair of Super Bowl victories, including the one that capped 1972’s legendary undefeated, untied season.
In retirement, he became just as renowned for his advocacy on behalf of those who, like himself and his son Marc, were hobbled by football injuries. Mr. Buoniconti, who two years ago publicly pledged to donate his brain and spinal cord for chronic traumatic encephalopathy research, died Tuesday at home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 78. A cause of death wasn’t immediately available.
“I’m not half the man I used to be,” he said through tears at a November 2017 news conference, during which he called for more research into the effects of CTE, an incurable, degenerative neurological disease that has been linked to the repeated head blows football players experience.
“I don’t do this for myself,” he said that day, by then using a wheelchair to get around. “I do it for the thousands of others who will follow me.”
Mr. Buoniconti had already used the clout of his football fame to draw public attention to the sport’s injuries.
In 1985, his son Marc was paralyzed while playing football for The Citadel. In the ensuing years, as a founder of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and The Buoniconti Fund, Mr. Buoniconti helped raise some $500 million to support spinal cord research at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.
“My dad has been my hero and represents what I have always aspired to be; a leader, a mentor, and a champion,” Marc said in a statement. “He selflessly gave all to football, to his family, and to those who are less fortunate.”
Growing up in Springfield, Mr. Buoniconti was a star player at Cathedral High School, from which he graduated in 1958. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1962 and was picked in the 13th round of the American Football League draft by the Boston Patriots.
At 5 feet 11 inches and not much more than 200 pounds in his college years, Mr. Buoniconti was thought by many to be too small for professional football. “I now think size is overrated,” he told the Globe’s McDonough in 1966, well into his AFL career.
Mr. Buoniconti helped lead the Patriots defense from 1962-68, and was twice named to the Pro Bowl while playing for the Dolphins from 1969-76. He retired that year as a six-time All-AFL selection and a member of the All-AFL 10-year anniversary team.
“He was a Hall of Fame player on the field, but more importantly, a Hall of Fame person off it,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a statement. “As an undersized, overachieving linebacker, he quickly became a fan favorite in Boston, and he remains one of the most iconic homegrown players in franchise history.”
In a statement, Pro Football Hall of Fame president and chief executive David Baker noted that Mr. Buoniconti had led Miami’s fearsome “No-Name Defense,” and indeed had lived his life “with grit, determination, courage, and compassion. Nick’s contributions off the field were even greater than what he did on it. He lived a life of honor.”
Born Dec. 15, 1940, Nicholas Anthony Buoniconti Jr. was a son of Nicholas Buoniconti Sr. and Pasqualina Mercolino, who was known as Patsy. His parents ran an Italian bakery.
Though Mr. Buoniconti was a star athlete in Springfield, “I didn’t want to go to Notre Dame because I thought I wasn’t big enough,” he said in the 1966 interview.
“I was the smallest guy on the field,” he recalled, adding that during his first night at college, “I remember sitting in that room and asking myself: ‘What am I doing here?’ ”
His worries were for naught. He became a team captain and an All-American at Notre Dame. And he didn’t set aside studies upon joining the Patriots, graduating from Suffolk University Law School in 1968.
“I was bitter when I left Boston,” he told the Globe in 1978. “I had just passed the Massachusetts Bar exam and a week later I was traded to Miami.”
The trade proved beneficial, though, bringing him two Super Bowl rings. He led a Dolphins defense that allowed only a single touchdown in each title contest. Miami defeated the Washington Redskins, 14-7, for the 1972 title and the Minnesota Vikings, 24-7, the next season.
After retiring, Mr. Buoniconti was a player agent, president of US Tobacco, and a cohost of HBO’s “Inside the NFL.” He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
It was in 1985, when Marc was paralyzed, that Mr. Buoniconti dedicated himself to advocating for medical research.
“He made a promise to me that turned into a revolution in paralysis research,” Marc said in his statement. “We can best honor his dedication and endless commitment by continuing with our work until that promise is fulfilled and a cure is found.”
And then Mr. Buoniconti’s own football injuries caught up with him. Those included at least 10 concussions as a player, among them one in the 1972 Super Bowl that “knocked me silly.”
In a 2017 interview with Sports Illustrated, he spoke frankly about the decline of his basic abilities. “I feel lost,” he told the magazine. “I feel like a child.”
After his own dementia diagnosis, he dedicated himself anew to research, including ensuring that his brain could be studied after he died.
In the November 2017 news conference, he said he hoped his donation to Boston University’s CTE Center, the Concussion Legacy Foundation, and the VA Boston Healthcare System would help researchers better understand the link between head impacts in sports and brain damage.
“Nick courageously fought the greatest battle of his life against a devastating and untreatable neurodegenerative disease that was most likely CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” the CTE Center said in a statement Wednesday. “Nick pledged to donate his brain to the BU CTE Center and established a research fund with his wife, Lynn, to accelerate research on the diagnosis, care, and treatment for CTE.”
Mr. Buoniconti leaves his wife, Lynn; four children, Gina, Nick III, Marc, and Justin; his former wife, Terry; two brothers, Robert and Peter; and four grandchildren. Plans for a memorial service were not immediately available.
Mr. Buoniconti, who coauthored the book “How to Play Defense” with former Dolphins teammate Dick Anderson, collected numerous awards over the years for his civic leadership, along with several honorary college degrees.
He was named to the halls of fame for the Patriots and the Dolphins, and had served on many corporate boards.
In 1966, he recalled the advice he had been given, words that guided his determination to keep playing: “I don’t care who you are or how good you are — somebody’s going to knock you down. The important thing is to not stay there.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bmarquard@globe.com.