Former NFL player Fred Willis advocated for CTE, 'saved' Houston Oilers

He left the field but continued to excel. He owned several restaurants, though the one aspect Fred Willis could really sink his teeth into was the delicate matter concerning brain health for former football players.

Willis, a Natick native and a record-setting running back at Boston College who played six seasons in the NFL, founded two organizations that fought on behalf of NFL players suffering the symptoms of Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

He also recently was given credit for saving a moribund NFL franchise in 1974 that is currently thriving as the Tennessee Titans.

“He always tried to do what’s right,” said Barry Gallup, a longtime player, coach and administrator at BC who attended the Chestnut Hill school with Willis. “Even after he retired, he got very involved with CTE in athletics. A lot of guys in the NFL stayed away from it, but he was one of the ambassadors.”

Willis died on July 4 at age 75.

He was the first to rush for 1,000 yards in a season at BC, where he graduated in 1971 as the career leader with 2,115 yards in three seasons. He also played hockey for the Eagles. The All-American football player was inducted into BC’s Hall of Fame in ’77, the same year Pete Cronan graduated from the school.

Cronan, who like Willis played at Marian High in Framingham and the NFL, said CTE ”was a hot-button issue. When he started to notice guys deteriorating rapidly, I think it really struck a chord with him — that he felt like he had to do something.”

Willis founded NFL Players Brains Matter after he retired from the NFL in 1977, and in 2017 founded HPN Neurologic in an effort to advocate for players, past and present, who are suffering from head trauma.

“Through his continued advocacy, treatment and accumulating trial study data and exhaustive work ethic and ground-breaking representation, Fred has helped raise the issue of TBI/CTE into the national consciousness,” reads a passage in his obituary, “and is changing how sports are played and how players of all sports return to the game from concussions.”

Brett Willis, one of Fred’s five children and a rugby player for 20 years who ”suffered my share of concussions,” said his father took it upon himself to advocate for both former and current players, including at the youth level.

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“He was very concerned about the treatment of NFL players — and himself having suffered a lot from head injuries throughout his career — was something he was very passionate about,” said Brett Willis, who lives in Sunset Beach, California. “I was proud of him that he was able to do it late in life and create a company that was so cutting-edge that no one else was considering or really doing.”

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Fred Willis 'saved the Oilers'

In addition to helping CTE patients, Willis is credited with likely saving an NFL franchise. In a 20-minute YouTube video posted on Sunday by OfficialJaguarGator9, Willis’ legacy goes beyond player health.

Willis was drafted in the fourth round of the 1971 NFL draft, 93rd overall and six spots ahead of Joe Theismann, by the Cincinnati Bengals. He was traded to the Houston Oilers — the deal involved future Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner — the following season.

The Oilers finished the ’73 season at 1-13 for the second year in a row and were “widely regarded as the laughingstock of football,” according to the narration on the YouTube video titled ”The Craziest Moment of Fred Willis’ NFL Career."

Willis, however, led the AFC in receptions (57) that fall, a season in which head coach Bill Peterson was fired after five games and replaced by Sid Gillman, the team’s general manager. Gillman, an eventual member of the Professional and College Football Halls of Fame, was 63 nearing the end of his coaching career and was reluctant to return as coach in ’74.

Not wanting to start over with a new coach, Willis organized a petition within the team and handed it to Gillman, who had a change of heart and guided Houston to a 7-7 record, including a road win over the eventual Super Bowl IX champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

A year later, the Oilers, with O.A. ”Bum" Phillips as head coach, went 10-4 and began to gain league-wide respectability.

The YouTube video's narrator noted that out of 442 players drafted in 1971, Willis was one of just five to finish his career with 1,000 rushing and receiving yards, a list that includes Hall of Famer John Riggins.

“The reason for Gillman’s success, and the reason for Gillman’s season that changed the trajectory of the Houston Oilers and the NFL forever? Even though it might not show on the stat sheet whatsoever, it was entirely because of his running back — the late Fred Willis,” the narrator says, before concluding: “He saved the Oilers. And for that, he will always be remembered throughout the long and storied history of this game. Rest in peace to a heck of a player and a heck of a person.”

The Oilers moved northeast in ’97 and became the Tennessee Titans. If not for the YouTube post, which has nearly 3,000 views, Fred Willis’ death may have been a mere footnote on a national level.

Now his family has another chapter to add to the story of the boy who grew up playing flag football at Coolidge Field.

“I hadn’t heard the story that this guy tells,” Brett Willis said. “It was incredibly revealing about his character.”

Willis met wife 'on the Green Line'

Willis met the woman who became his first wife, Laurinda Low, late in his Boston College days. She attended Boston University.

”He chased her down on the Green Line,” Brett Willis, referring to Boston's MBTA subway system, quipped. The couple soon moved to Cincinnati, where Fred began his NFL career.

According to his obituary, Willis was founding partner of Fuddruckers restaurant, which grew to become a national chain. He also established Steamers Bar & Grill in Hyannisport; Willy's Bar-B-Q in Westborough; Willy's Steakhouse Grill & Sushi Bar in Shrewsbury; and Willy's Tuscan Trattoria in Shrewsbury.

Flag football at Coolidge Field, hockey for Natick Comets

Willis attended the former St. Patrick’s School, which was recently torn down along East Central Street (Route 135) in Natick, until eighth grade. He grew up on Sherman Street, which is a block away and dead-ends at Coolidge Field.

”That was really his playground,” said John Moran, his classmate and fellow St. Patrick's altar boy. “He was very comfortable there.”

The pair teamed up on an undefeated flag football team at St. Patrick’s, but Moran said Willis excelled on skates as well.

“Growing up, he was a better hockey player than football player,” he said. “He was phenomenal. He could take the puck like Bobby Orr and take it the whole length of the arena and right into the net.”

Moran, a 1967 Natick High graduate, said Willis played for the Natick Comets youth hockey program and was also offered football scholarships at Notre Dame and Michigan, but says he chose Boston College because that school allowed Willis to play both sports.

Willis played just two seasons of hockey at BC, but played for the national team in Europe. He attended the now-defunct Marian High School in Framingham, which is when he began to lift weights, a new practice at the time. Cronan, as a Marian freshman, remembered seeing Willis work out at DeCola’s gym in Saxonville later on.

“I’m a pencil-necked geek — a little high school kid,” said Cronan, who played in two Super Bowls as part of an eight-year NFL career. “And he comes walking in with a couple of his boys, and I was like, ’Who are those guys?' He was very impressive in stature. He was built for power.”

Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Natick's Fred Willis advocated for CTE, led Houston Oilers turnaround