Obituary
Matt Suhey, 1958–2026
He was not the loudest Bear. He was the one who showed up.
Chicago · 12 September 2026
Matt Suhey was not the loudest Bear. He was the one who showed up. I remember Matt Suhey as the player I could relate to on that team - I was playing junior high football at the time and didn’t have the skillset of a Walter Payton or a Richard Dent or a Mike Singletary - but thought if I just worked hard enough MAYBE just MAYBE - I COULD BE a Matt Suhey. Maybe not in Penn State or Chicago Bears terms - but successful. A player. An example. A man my parents and grandparents at US Steel related with - a man who wore a hard hat to work, a man that played with intensity and purpose. Every day. He never seemed to let limitations, lack of physical attributes or egos get in the way of the mission or success. He was one of us. He did it with grace and style. And with a smile.
Born Matthew Jerome Suhey on July 7, 1958, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, he came from football the way some families come from farming. His grandfather, Bob Higgins, coached Penn State. His father, Steve Suhey, is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Matt played at State College Area High School, then for the Nittany Lions from 1976 to 1979, running for 2,818 yards and 26 touchdowns. His son Joe later played fullback at Penn State too. Four generations. People in State College still call that clan the first family of Penn State football.
Chicago drafted him in the second round in 1980, 46th overall. He stayed ten years. One team. One city. One job. Fullback. He started 100 of 148 regular-season games. He ran for 2,946 yards and 20 touchdowns and caught 260 passes for another 2,113 yards. Those are good numbers. They are not why people remember him.
He was the lead blocker for Walter Payton. He punched holes so Payton could become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher. On November 10, 1985, they both went over 100 yards in the same game against Detroit. In Super Bowl XX on January 26, 1986, Suhey scored the first touchdown of the night, an 11-yard run, as the Bears beat New England 46-10. That is still the only Super Bowl the franchise has. He finished that game with 52 yards on 11 carries and a 24-yard catch. Then he went back to blocking.
Mike Singletary, who hit him every day in practice, said it best after he died. Suhey was a lunch-pail guy. If you knocked him down, he said "good hit" and tried to flatten you on the next play. He never made a teammate the enemy. When Singletary thinks of Chicago now, he said, he thinks of Suhey’s smile and the way he teased people. He said he was going to miss that light.
Gary Fencik had breakfast on the calendar with him the week he died. Out of the blue, Fencik said. At training camp in Platteville, Suhey once put up a satellite dish. Fencik thought it was for TV. It was so Suhey could trade commodities from camp. After football he worked the Chicago Board of Trade and later the bottled-water business with AquaPenn. He put a Penn State marketing degree to work the same way he put his shoulder into a linebacker. No fuss.
The money part of the story is simple. Football paid him. Trading and water kept him independent. He did not need the spotlight after 1989. He used the independence to keep a promise.
Payton was godfather to Suhey’s youngest son, Scott. After Payton died in 1999, Suhey became executor of the estate and a stand-in father for Payton’s kids. Jarrett Payton wrote it without dressing it up. His father left Matt in charge, and Matt never let that responsibility sit lightly. He protected the family. He looked after them. He made sure they were okay, year after year, without ever making it about himself. Connie Payton called him family. Brittany Payton said he was there on the days her father did not want anyone else in the room.
He is survived by Donna, his wife of 38 years; their children Joe, Allison and Scott; and by the Payton family he never stopped showing up for. Funeral arrangements have not been made public as of this writing.
If you only remember the Super Bowl clip, remember this too. The hardest job on that 1985 team was often the one nobody filmed. Matt Suhey did that job, then he did the harder one after the cameras left.