LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Teammates call him tough. Critics call him crazy. Sports Illustrated called him feared.

"They're all lying," Olin Kreutz said with a smile.

Kreutz answers questions before they're finished, having heard them all hundreds of times. The fights with teammates, two jaws broken by his fist. The 95 starts in his past 96 games for the Chicago Bears, including 70 consecutive. The six Pro Bowls in nine seasons. The reputation.

"That stuff is all overdone," the former Saint Louis School and Washington Husky said. "I just play the game the way it should be played."

Then, after 11 minutes and nearly four times that many questions, Kreutz admits his toughness. Got him. Finally.

"No one in Seattle told you I was a tough interview?" he asks.

This is Olin Kreutz, according to teammates chuckling at nearby lockers. They use all the same words to define him — tough, intimidating, feared — and yet come back to one more than any other, a word rarely used to describe a center. Unique.

"There's only one Olin," Bears guard Ruben Brown said, unable to conceal laughter.

Others say exactly the same thing. They never met another person like Kreutz, the center of this Bears team, both by position and in stature.

Backup tackle John St. Clair said there's another side to Kreutz no one talks about and few outside the locker room see. That he's funny. That he even plays practical jokes on teammates.

"You won't find anybody tougher than Olin," St. Clair said, "but you won't find many people funnier than Olin, either."

Then there is the more-publicized side of Kreutz that manifested in two fights with teammates, one with the Huskies (Sekou Wiggs) and one with the Bears. Both ended in broken jaws. Asked about his fight with teammate Fred Miller this week — with the Bears hosting the Seahawks in a playoff game today — Kreutz pointed two lockers over and said, "Fred's my friend," to which Miller nodded but said nothing.

Bottom line: There's more to Olin Kreutz than meets the newspaper.