Original Atlanta Falcon Alex Hawkins lived life to the fullest

Pictured in Denmark, S.C., on Jan. 31, 2007  Alex Hawkins played for the University of South Carolina and was the NFL's first special-teams captain with the Baltimore  Colts, playing his last NFL game in the Super Bowl against Joe Namath's Jets.  Hawkins died Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017, at age 80. (Jeff Blake / The State)

Credit: Jeff Blake

Credit: Jeff Blake

Pictured in Denmark, S.C., on Jan. 31, 2007 Alex Hawkins played for the University of South Carolina and was the NFL's first special-teams captain with the Baltimore Colts, playing his last NFL game in the Super Bowl against Joe Namath's Jets. Hawkins died Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017, at age 80. (Jeff Blake / The State)

When you carry the title of “Original Atlanta Falcon” and nicknames such as “Mr. Irreverent” and “Captain Who?” as Alex Hawkins did to his death Tuesday, you’d better have soul and tales to tell.

The former running back, receiver and special-teams ace topped those lists before he died at age 80 in a Columbia, S.C., assisted-living facility near his home. He battled dementia for several years.

Hawkins, who the Falcons claimed from the Baltimore Colts in an NFL expansion draft before the Falcons’ inaugural season of 1966, joined the team with a resume as a heady and versatile player.

He also brought the yoke of roustabout, perhaps one of the league’s more prolific players at sneaking out of hotels and training camps.

Hawkins was legendary off the field – as a rogue.

There was some of that in the locker room as well.

“He was a great special-teams player, a great locker room guy, great for morale,” former Colts teammate Bill Curry said Thursday. “Every week, he’d give out the Cutty Sark special-teams award, a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch.

"He would stand up and make a long speech about all these plays people made ... but for the 35th time in a row he’d win the award.”

Hawkins carried positive energy in his pockets.

“I never saw him without a smile,” said former Falcons center Jeff Van Note, who appeared on the WSB Falcons radio show many times while Alex was on the broadcast team in the early 1970s after his 10-year NFL career.

“If the show was at 7 ... you had to be there at 5:15 or so, and he’d loosen you up with a few beers. He was about the most relaxed, fun person you’d ever want to be around. Just enjoyed the moment, enjoyed life and had a good time.”

For all of the fun that he had in life, Hawkins looked out for others, as former Falcons coach Dan Reeves attributes his lengthy NFL career to the fellow former Gamecock.

“We did the Johnny Unitas football camp in Atlanta, and I got to know him,” said Reeves, who played collegiately at South Carolina after Hawkins. “He was really just a fun guy to be around, and had so many stories.

“He was always looking at the positive, and that’s a great trait. At that camp, he always said, ‘Let’s go eat at this place, or go to this nightclub ... always smiling.”

After growing up in South Charleston, W.Va., Hawkins butted heads with coaches. He was drafted 13th overall in 1959 by the Green Bay Packers after a sterling college career, but was cut by legendary coach Vince Lombardi before his rookie season.

The Colts picked him up, and he was a jack-of-all-trades for the next seven seasons, playing as a rookie in the 1959 NFL Championship game where Baltimore beat the New York Giants.

Hawkins moved on to Atlanta, where Falcons coach Norb Hecker was looking for leadership. He got something else.

A long-ago story in the Los Angeles Times said that at the team’s first training camp in Black Mountain, N.C., Hawkins once rolled up at 5 a.m. in the back of a watermelon truck.

“Do you want to say anything on your behalf?” the coach asked.

“Hawk” allegedly responded, “Would you believe I was kidnapped?”

The Falcons traded Hawkins back to the Colts three games into the 1967 season largely because he drove Atlanta coach Norb Hecker nuts.

“I knew this was not going to work at one of our early team meetings,” Hawkins told Georgia Trend magazine in 2007. “Norb threatened to take away my BB gun. He opened the team meeting with a question, ‘Who shot out the big light in front of the dorm?’ Since I was the only one with a Red Ryder, all eyes turned on me.”

A spectacular player in college, where he played every skill position on offense, in the secondary and even at linebacker, Hawkins won the 1958 ACC player-of-the-year award. He led South Carolina in passing yardage (1957), receiving yardage (1956), scoring (1956-58), punt returns (1957-58) and interceptions (1956).

As a pro, he was again a jack-of-trades.

He was chiefly a backup running back early in Baltimore, a supreme special-teams player and finally a receiver later in his career. He’s believed to have been the first special-teams captain in NFL history.

“(Former Colts coach Don) Shula decided he wanted a captain for the special teams to go with Johnny Unitas (offense) and Gino Marchetti (defense) and pointed to me,” Hawkins said over the years. “Well, the officials came over to the sidelines and met us and said hello to Unitas and Marchetti.

“Shula said, ‘Here’s our special-teams captain, Alex Hawkins.’ The referee said, ‘Captain Who?’”

That nickname stuck, along with others, even though Hawkins did not merit inclusion upon any of the NFL’s statistical Who’s Who lists.

He rushed 208 times for 787 yards and 10 touchdowns, caught 129 passes for 1,751 yards and 12 scores, returned 52 punts for 358 yards, and six kickoffs for 86 yards.

Yet he time and again paced punt and kickoff coverage teams.

Reeves also was undrafted out of South Carolina, where he played quarterback and multiple positions, before he signed with the Dallas Cowboys in 1965. He made the team, playing through the ’72 season, chiefly as a backup running back.

“He called me and asked to workout (in the offseason),” Reeves recalled. “I’d never played special teams, and he said, ‘You need to volunteer for everything you can,’ ... so I did. I stuck my hand up and they put me in on everything.

“If you could do things on special teams, that made them keep you around longer. Had I not had that advice from Alex I would not have made it. He was as special-teams guru.”

After retiring following the ’68 season, Hawkins worked in broadcasting for several years, including a stint on national television. There, the legendary Vin Scully once followed an inane comment by Hawk by asking, “Did you wear a helmet when you played?”

He did, and he spent time after his career advocating for former NFL players so that they might be covered by the NFL’s “88 Plan,” which provides retired players up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia, including Alzheimers and Parkinson’s Disease.

“Captain Who?” wound up in the plan.

Even later in life, he confounded coaches, as when at a Colts reunion event in 2004 former players and coaches boarded a bus.

“We had a reception at one nice place, and we were going to get on a bus and go to another nice place,” Curry recalled. “The head coach always sits in the front seat as if there was a big sign there.

“Shula comes to get on the bus, and Hawkins is sitting there. Everybody just cracked up ... and Shula just says, ‘Some things never change.’ Just being around him was such a joy.”