After Charles Tillman transformed football, he joined the FBI. Then the immigration raids started

The Charles Tillman you remember transformed defensive football with his“Peanut Punch,” grabbed more interceptions than any cornerback in Bears history and had a rivalry with Detroit Lions great Calvin Johnson that resembled Hagler-Hearns.

The Charles Tillman you don’t remember carried an AR-15-style rifle on one side and a 9-millimeter pistol on the other.

For about eight years after retiring from football, Tillman worked as an FBI agent. Most of that time, he was on a safe streets task force. At a small cubicle in the FBI building in downtown Chicago, he researched drug trafficking, human trafficking, robberies, murders, organized crime, racketeering and more. Then, working the streets, he tried to get a handle on a suspect’s pattern of life and made arrests. In his final year at the FBI, he served as a firearms and tactical instructor, teaching others to shoot and engage in close-quarters combat.

It wasn’t a job to him as much as it was a vocation. He loved the people he worked with and found honor, integrity and nobility in their service.

Then came that day last January.

Tillman and the other FBI agents in Chicago received word that White House border czar Tom Homan and TV personality “Dr. Phil” McGraw were coming to town with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to lead a crackdown on illegal immigration. There would be targeted arrests; participation from the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the Border Patrol and the U.S. Marshals was expected.

“It was, ‘We need everybody outside, and we want everyone standing guard,’” Tillman says. “And they wanted us to make arrests. It wasn’t just about going after the violent individuals. It was, ‘There’s some guys working on a house outside. Let’s go swap them up, and it will count for the quota system.’ To me, it felt political.”

Tillman has long believed the United States has an immigration problem. But he thought it was wrong to harass people just because they looked a certain way. Racial profiling? He had a deep, personal understanding. And the way he understood it, investigations were supposed to take months, not minutes.

Tillman’s daughter Tessa had a basketball game that day. Rather than join an immigration raid, he went to her game.

Above the sounds of dribbling balls and squeaking shoes, he heard something else.

His inner voice was telling him that how he would be remembered means something.

Not long after, he resigned from the FBI.

When Tillman was a boy, he didn’t want to be a football player.

His father, Donald Tillman II, served in the Army for 20 years, holding a variety of roles, including Military Police officer, supply sergeant and platoon sergeant. He let his son try on night-vision goggles. Donald let him hold weapons — M-16s, M-240s, 50-caliber machine guns. He showed him tanks — Bradleys and M1 Abrams. There were cargo trucks such as the Deuce-and-a-Half and helicopters such as Apaches and Cobras.

“Here I was, a 5-year-old sitting in a cockpit,” Charles says. “I thought it was the coolest (expletive) ever.”

So Charles wanted to be like cartoon superhero G.I. Joe, take on Cobra Commander, Serpentor and Destro, and fight evil with good.

In the fifth grade, when his dad was stationed in Germany, Tillman was befriended by a Puerto Rican kid they called Gaki, who introduced him to plantains, Puerto Rican music and Spanish words. On military bases, Tillman played with kids who were German, Polish, Dominican, Asian, Filipino and South Korean. When he went to a school in Chicago where all the kids were Black, he thought it was weird.

But how he saw the world wasn’t how everyone saw it.

When Tillman was in sixth grade, police were called when he and a group of African American friends visited a White friend in an affluent neighborhood and had a mild argument with another group of White kids. Two squad cars pulled up, officers forced Tillman and his friends to their knees and told them to put their hands on their heads, where they were forced to stay for close to 30 minutes.

About five years later, he was playing basketball with friends on a military base when a group of plainclothes officers approached them and asked for identification. They didn’t have their IDs, which prompted one of the officers to tell them to “line up plantation style,” Tillman says. He then told them that if they tried to run, he would shoot them.

Running was one of Tillman’s gifts. His 40-yard dash time was 4.49. He also had instinct and toughness, and grew to 6 feet 2 and 210 pounds. And there was something more responsible for everything he accomplished — he could create his destiny.

“He was always very determined when he got stuck on something,” Donald says of his son, who has a head-tilted, lean-in glare that says he means business. “He would do it till the end. If he didn’t know how to do something, he asked a lot of questions — so many, he got on your nerves.”

As Tillman prepared for his senior year of high school, Donald and Charles lived alone in Copperas Cove, Texas; Donald and Charles’ mother, Arbria, were divorced and Charles’ older brother, Donald III, was away at college. Donald was retiring from the military and announced that he and Charles were moving to Dallas so he could find work. Charles was confident that if he stayed at Copperas Cove High, where he had been a varsity starter since his sophomore year, he would excel on the field and earn a scholarship. Moving to Dallas was an unknown, and he feared it could lead to a football dead end.

Starting in kindergarten, Charles attended 12 schools in as many years and never complained. He wouldn’t keep quiet now, though. He promised his father that if they stayed in Copperas Cove, he would get a scholarship and play in the NFL.

“Give me six months,” he pleaded. “After football season, if you want to go to Alaska, I’ll go with you and not say a word. But you’ve got to give me six months.”

Donald relented and Charles worked harder than ever, knowing that father’s sacrifice needed to be matched by son’s. The determination resulted in a scholarship to Louisiana-Lafayette, where he would start for four years and play so well that they retired his jersey.

It was a big step to the NFL, where the rookie Tillman found himself covering Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss. In a December game at Soldier Field, Moss, who was on his way to 1,632 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns, appeared to catch a pass in the end zone over Tillman with a little more than a minute to play. But Tillman wrestled it away for an interception that enabled the Bears to win by three.

In the 1956 book “The Strangest Secret,” the author makes the case that our dominant thoughts become our reality. The book left an imprint on Tillman, who subsequently wasn’t intimidated by Moss or anyone else.

“I’m better than Calvin, Randy, Marvin Harrison, anybody.”

“I’m the greatest corner ever.”

“Nobody can beat me.”

It wasn’t just his own words that helped him soar.

In his head, he quoted Shakespeare.

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

And Marcus Aurelius.

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

And Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

Tillman thought about takeaways.

He excelled at the Peanut Punch because he made it about force, motion and angles. To improve his hand speed, he did boxing drills. And like a good boxer, he didn’t just punch — he used strategy, patience and changeups. He looked for vulnerabilities. To him, it was sweet science.

He had 44 forced fumbles — eighth most in NFL history and 10 more than the next-closest cornerback. Moss, Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre were among his victims. Though he never forced Calvin Johnson to fumble, Tillman did break up a Johnson catch in the end zone with a Peanut Punch in 2012. He also helped hold Johnson to three receptions and 34 yards on 11 targets in that game.

And the Peanut Punch could inflict damage even without causing fumbles. “I definitely caught a few in the ribs,” Johnson says, chuckling.

Johnson disliked Tillman for years because he thought he tackled him with unnecessary violence near the sideline on a reverse in his rookie year. But he came to respect him as he came to understand his intensity.

“He was an ultimate competitor,” Johnson says. “You wanted to be healthy going into a game against him because you knew he would be in for all 60 plays, and it didn’t matter if you got 100 yards or 30, you’d get the same intensity every snap.”

Those who played with and against Tillman followed him around the field like jackals follow a tiger, knowing they would be fed.

Johnson recalls allowing Tillman to get off his block attempt on a Reggie Bush run. He knew what was coming. Sure enough, Tillman gave Bush a Peanut Punch, knocking the ball out. Johnson ran straight to where he thought the ball would bounce and recovered.

Former Bears defensive tackle Anthony “Spice” Adams displays a football on a mantel. He kept it after recovering it during a game against the Eagles in 2009. It was loose because of a Peanut Punch — it was one of three fumbles Tillman forced in that game.

“Any time I saw the word Tillman and 33, I started running because I knew there was a chance he was going to punch the ball out,” he says. “He never gave up on a play. I never saw it. He’d come running from the other side of the field even if he had no chance to catch the guy. It made me step my game up.”

As a member of the Carolina Panthers, Tillman partially tore his ACL in the ninth game of his final season. Doctors told him that if he didn’t have season-ending surgery, the ligament would tear completely. But the Panthers were undefeated, so he chose to rehab for a month and come back for a chance to win what would have been his first championship at any level.

In his first game back, he had a forced fumble, a recovery and an interception to help the Panthers to their 14th victory without a loss. But two games later, in the regular-season finale, the ACL tore completely and Tillman was a spectator for a Super Bowl loss.

By then, he had been looking to his next mountain for years.

In early 2012, Tillman and his family were in Hawaii for his first Pro Bowl. As his wife and children soaked up Waikiki Beach, he worked on a PowerPoint presentation about seizures and warrants. Tillman was studying for his master’s degree in Homeland Security Management, which he received from Kaplan University during his final season as a player.

When he retired at 36, Tillman was too old to serve in the Army. But the FBI accepts applicants until they are 37.

“I thought the NFL was the greatest job ever,” he says. “What’s the second-greatest job ever? The FBI. Their motto means something — Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.”

He wouldn’t be like most FBI agents. The others called him “Trigger Mike” because, like Will Smith’s Mike “Trigger Mike” Lowery character in “Bad Boys,” Tillman was a well-off law enforcement officer who didn’t need to be doing dirty work. They teased him about his footwear. After being sponsored by Nike during his playing career, Tillman had a collection of Jordans and rotated through about 60 pairs, with the 11s and 4s getting the most use as his favorites.

When Tillman was recognized as a former player on the job, he denied he was who he was and even used an alias, claiming he was Wendell Thompson. If he sensed his fame could be a problem, he sometimes told his fellow agents he would stay back to avoid a scene.

Rapper Lil Reese told VladTV that when Tillman was part of a 2018 raid of Lil Reese’s house, the rapper asked him, “Ain’t you Charles Tillman?” Tillman denies speaking with Reese during the bust, which was conducted with the Chicago Police Department. Reese also claimed the officers took $100,000 from him, which Tillman says was a lie.

Some of Tillman’s best work was done in ominous shadows.

A woman was being held as a sex slave. Tillman’s crew found out where she was being held and rescued her. “She was beaten and had bruises on her body and was very grateful,” he says.

He and his unit tracked down a bank robber with prior convictions. They caught him off guard, which was probably fortunate because he later said he would have gone out shooting rather than risk spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Chills still run through Tillman when he talks about his most difficult day on the job. He was enjoying the Fourth of July at home in 2022 when he received a text. There was an active shooter at a parade in Highland Park. Deploy immediately, he was told. He quickly changed into a MultiCam outfit and helmet and laced up tactical boots. He took his guns and battle belt with handcuffs, a magazine bag and a dump pouch and got there in seven minutes, making him one of the initial first responders on the scene.

On the parade route were abandoned strollers, wagons and lawn chairs.

And then, bodies covered with bloody sheets.

Seven were killed; many were injured.

In a few hours, after witness interviews and surveillance video reviews, the shooter was identified. Tillman was part of the team that went to the shooter’s house. He wasn’t there, but the house was canvassed and the suspect was taken into custody shortly after.

“It was a very sad day,” Tillman says. “We all were hurt.”

Another day, Tillman took a drug dealer who had a history of arrests into custody. But first, he asked if he would like to change his clothes and say goodbye to loved ones. Then, on the way to jail, Tillman stopped to get him McDonald’s. The suspect told Tillman he had never been treated so nicely by an arresting officer.

Finding a way to take freedom without taking dignity was important to Tillman. “They screwed up, but you can still treat them like human beings,” Tillman says. “It was not for me to judge them.”

It was time to move on when Tillman thought it was too difficult to perform his duties with respect.

The Peanut Punch has its own Wikipedia page.

When Tillman’s Aunt Renee laid eyes on baby Charles, she said, “Look at this little peanut-headed boy.” His parents still call him Peanut.

The Peanut Punch was born during Tillman’s freshman year in college. In a game against Louisiana-Monroe, Tillman chased a ball carrier for close to 40 yards before wrapping with his left arm and punching the ball with his right. The fumbled ball rolled out of the end zone, creating a turnover and planting a seed that became a beanstalk.

Before Tillman, defenders were taught to wrap the ball carrier and tackle. Since Tillman, they have been coached to tackle while trying to get the ball out.

Now, the term “Peanut Punch” is invoked almost every football weekend.

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni showed his team tape of Tillman last season, and the Eagles had three Peanut Punches in the playoffs on their way to a Super Bowl championship. Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt learned the Punch from a college coach who had coached Tillman and credits the technique for some of his 36 forced fumbles. Seattle’s Legion of Boom studied him.

Tillman’s college roommate Chris Gistorb is the defensive line coach at McNeese State. He was at a coaching clinic when he called Tillman to tell him college coaches from across the country were watching tape of Tillman in a presentation on the Peanut Punch. Tillman has taught the technique to high school players, at European clinics and to NFL players on the Bears, Panthers, Eagles and Bills.

Calvin Johnson says the Peanut Punch separates Tillman in the cornerback pantheon.

“When you think of DBs, you think interceptions,” Johnson says. “And yes, he had a bunch of interceptions. But he brought another whole component to the game with forced fumbles. Because of those, there is a legitimate conversation about the Hall of Fame with him. I have to say he is worthy.”

Tillman was a semifinalist for the Hall’s class of 2026 but did not survive the cutdown to 25 players. The drumbeat for his candidacy continues to get louder, however.

Because Tillman combined ability and mentality, Johnson ranks him among the top three cornerbacks he knew best, alongside Patrick Peterson and Al Harris. If he were building a championship-caliber defense, Johnson says he would want Peterson and Tillman as his outside corners.

At 44, Tillman is in good enough shape to have recently competed in a Hyrox Challenge that required eight 1K runs interspersed with exercises, including a sled push, farmer’s carry and sandbag lunges.

He stays fit despite football’s residuals — in addition to the torn ACL, the game gave Tillman four broken ribs, a punctured lung, three shoulder surgeries, two triceps surgeries, two back surgeries, bulging disks in his neck and arthritic wrists.

He once dove to catch a ball, dislocating the pinkie on his left hand and disfiguring it for life. That finger pointed to the port side of the boat he and a friend boarded in St. Joseph, Michigan, on Sept. 1, 2019. In 25 hours, the two of them rowed that boat 65 miles across Lake Michigan to 31st Street Harbor near Soldier Field to raise $100,000 for pediatric cancer research.

Helping children with health challenges has been especially important to Tillman since 2008, when his daughter Tiana, 3 at the time, received a life-saving heart transplant after she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. Tillman and his wife, Jackie, subsequently founded the Charles Tillman Cornerstone Foundation to support families with critically ill children. His work with the Foundation helped him win the 2013 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award.

Retiring from the FBI has given Tillman time to be more involved in the lives of Tiana, 17, and her siblings, Tayla, 20, Tysen, 16, and Tessa, 13. His calendar is filled with pickups and drop-offs, coaching, charity work and podcasting with former teammate Roman Harper — they interview former players for “NFL Players: Second Acts.” He’s also considering getting a Ph.D., maybe in history.

Stepping away from his second career was possible only because of his first career.

“There are a lot of people in the FBI that aren’t happy with how the organization is being run by (FBI Director) Kash Patel, but they can’t quit like I did,” he says.

How will he be remembered?

Peanut Puncher.

Ultimate competitor.

Man of the Year.

Investigator and upholder of the Constitution.

Dissenter.

He’s good with all of it.

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