Inside the NFL’s First Family

by Bruce Matthews

  Oh man, I thought. What is this all about? I played against Too Tall a few more times before he retired, but he’d made his point. I never did cut block him again.

  We opened the 1983 season against the Green Bay Packers, who’d won their division the year before. Since I’d missed most of the preseason, I was on the bench and John Schuhmacher started the game at right guard. “Shoe” was five years older than me. Ironically, he also went to Arcadia High School and played with my brother at USC.

  Unfortunately for Shoe, during one play in the first half against the Packers, a pile of bodies fell on him. His leg was broken. I replaced him and started the next game—and, except for one season, I started every game after that for the next nineteen years. Shoe likes to say that “You never know what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten injured in that Green Bay game. The streak might never have happened. Bruce might have been a first-round bust.” Shoe is a great dude and we’re still friends today.

  That Packers game was a thrill. Not only was it my first NFL game, but both teams’ offenses marched up and down the field. We nearly pulled off the upset, scoring three touchdowns in the final quarter to tie the game before losing on a field goal in overtime, 41–38.

  Even though we’d lost, I almost felt like we’d won. Our young team had showed a lot of promise. I felt we might surprise some people. Our offensive line—Mike Munchak and me at guard, Harvey Salem and Doug France at tackle, and David Carter at center, along with Schuhmacher—didn’t allow a quarterback sack for the game. Archie Manning took us all out to a steak dinner that week and said he’d do it every week we kept those defenders off him and recorded zero sacks.

  It never happened again that season.

  Our second game was against the Los Angeles Raiders in my old college home, Memorial Coliseum. That Raiders team was loaded—Jim Plunkett at quarterback, defensive stars such as Howie Long, Lyle Alzado, Mike Haynes, and Lester Hayes, and my former USC teammates Marcus Allen and Don Mosebar. The surroundings were familiar, but once that game started, it hit me: This is a whole different deal. I’m in the NFL now. These are men I’m playing against. They handled us, 20–6, and were on their way to a Super Bowl title.

  I was in for more surprises after our third game. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat us, 40–28. Two days later, I learned that Archie Manning and our tight end, future Hall of Famer Dave Casper, had been traded to the Minnesota Vikings for a pair of draft choices. Considering how upbeat we all felt after the Green Bay game, it was a lesson in how quickly things can change in the NFL.

  I soon discovered how quickly life can change as well. At the time, Carrie and I were renting an apartment in Houston. That evening, my dad called us at the apartment. I knew Mom had been dealing with some back pain and had gone into the hospital to get it checked out right before I left for training camp. Now the results of those tests were in, and they were a surprise to everyone: Mom had cancer.

  I talked on the phone with both Dad and Mom. They were optimistic about it. They expected to beat it. I didn’t know anything about cancer. I was concerned but not panicked. Mom’s been sick before, I thought. She’ll do whatever it takes to get well.

  The Oilers’ fortunes did not improve over the next several weeks. Ed Biles resigned after we lost to Denver and dropped to 0–6 on the season. It was the team’s thirteenth consecutive defeat dating back to the year before. Biles was replaced by defensive coordinator Chuck Studley.

  Our record was 0–10 when we hosted Detroit on November 13. The 5–5 Lions were favored by six points. My clearest memory from that game is Lions running back Billy Sims jumping into the air on a rush and hitting our cornerback, Steve Brown, with a karate kick to the chest. You can still catch it on YouTube. But for once, we were the better team. Earl Campbell rushed for 107 yards, Oliver Luck (father of quarterback Andrew Luck) threw a pair of touchdown passes, and we beat Detroit, 27–17. I finally had my first NFL victory.

  Two weeks later, we traveled to Tampa Bay. Both of our teams had records of 1–11. The media dubbed our matchup the Repus Bowl ( repus is super spelled backward). Sports Illustrated ’s Steve Wulf wrote, “Yes, this was the Small One, the battle of the beatens, the movable object meeting the resistible force. There were only tomorrows. When these two teams get together, nothing can happen. This game was for a marble.” I remember some of the Tampa fans had bags over their heads. I had to laugh when I saw guys walking around the stadium with a banner that read, “We Told Our Wives We Went to a Professional Football Game.”

  We were two bad teams. Naturally, Tampa Bay beat us, 33–24. I was learning about the highs and lows of the NFL. This was definitely one of the lows.

  I was looking forward to our second-to-last game of the season, however. We hosted Cleveland in my second NFL matchup against my brother. I was looking for redemption after whiffing on that block and losing to the Browns in our first game. Even more, I was excited that the whole family would be there. Carrie and I had just moved into a house in a Houston suburb and HBO was coming in to do a television special on the Matthews family. The Browns allowed Bruz to visit us the night before to participate in the HBO piece. Mom’s brother drove up from Corpus Christi. And of course, Mom and Dad flew in. I hadn’t seen Mom since before training camp.

  When she arrived, I was shocked. I knew she’d been going through chemotherapy treatments but I still did not expect to see such a change. She had lost her long blonde hair and wore a wig. She was physically weak and had to be transported in a wheelchair. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who only recently had been an excellent golfer, years ago winning some matches at a North Carolina country club. Golf was something she and I had shared and enjoyed, once playing sixteen or seventeen days in a row. Now she looked like she’d have trouble riding in a golf cart.

  That weekend, though, Mom as usual made sure the focus stayed on the entire family, not her. Even though she was feeling terrible, she talked about how excited she was to be there and never complained or left the room when the HBO filming went late. The next day, Mom and Dad watched me play as a pro for the first time. Even better, at least from my perspective, we beat the Browns, 34–27. Earl Campbell ran for 130 yards and Tim Smith had a huge day at receiver, gaining 150 yards and catching the winning touchdown pass in the fourth quarter from Oliver Luck. Though he finished on the losing side, Bruz had a pair of quarterback sacks against us. All in all, it was a good day for the Matthews family.

  We lost our last game, and the final game in the history of the Colts franchise in Baltimore, 20–10. We finished my first NFL season with a record of 2–14. In many ways the year had been a disaster, yet I was optimistic about the future. We had a lot of talented young players and a stockpile of draft choices. I was looking forward to being part of a team that could only get better.

  A dark cloud hung over all that optimism, however. Mom was not getting better. Carrie and I were back in our condo in California for Christmas and saw that Mom was declining. The chemotherapy was taking a toll and the cancer was progressing. Mom was sedated most of the time over the next several weeks. She never recovered. At three in the morning on March 8, 1984, Dad called. At age fifty-six, Mom had passed away.

  Mom was the heart and soul of our family. She’d always cared and always encouraged me and my brothers and sister. Growing up, if I ever wanted to ask a girl out or had a problem, I would talk to her and walk away feeling like I could take care of it. She’d always steered me in the right direction. When she heard that I’d gotten in trouble for something like talking in class, she’d say, “You shouldn’t be doing that, Bruce. You’re too nice a boy for that.” It was a way to get her message across while still being positive. Like most moms, she’d been my champion from the day I was born. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I was so blessed to have her in my life. The void she left is still there today.

  Losing my mom reminded me that life is short for all of us and that we should cherish those we love while we can. Taken by itself, that p
hilosophy might sound a little trite and hopeless. But I had just discovered something that put it into perspective—a hope more powerful than anything I’d experienced before.

  9

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  BIGGER THAN THE GAME

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  I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

  JOHN 14:6

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  ALL MY LIFE, IT SEEMED, I’d been working on a checklist. Once I marked all the boxes on my list, I made a new list. In high school, my checklist included “make the varsity, become a starter, earn all-league honors.” After high school, it was “get a scholarship from USC, make the travel team, start, be named an All-American, get drafted by the NFL, find the right girl, get married.”

  By the time I joined the Oilers, I had mentally checked off nearly all my boxes. In many ways, I had achieved everything I’d hoped for. I was making good money as a professional football player. I was married to the girl of my dreams. The future was bright.

  At the beginning of my rookie year, I expected to feel a sense of fulfillment, of having arrived. My philosophy had always been that if I kept working my list, I’d be happy. Yet something was missing. My accomplishments seemed hollow. I was a success in my field and believed I was generally a good person. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there had to be more to life than moving three-hundred-pound bodies six inches.

  All of that was in the back of my mind when I showered after our Friday practice before our opening game against Green Bay. Through the sound of water cascading over my head, I heard the familiar voice of Mike “Mongo” Stensrud, our nose tackle, over the intercom: “Hey, we’re going to have Bible study in fifteen minutes in the defense meeting room.”

  I knew that the Oilers, like the rest of the NFL, had a team chaplain. I also knew that Stensrud was a Christian. Maybe I should check that out sometime. Maybe those guys would have something to say about this empty feeling.

  We’d gone to church sporadically when I was a kid. The services seemed pretty regimented and designed for grown-ups. I mostly fidgeted in the pews. Out of boredom, I sometimes opened up a Bible and looked for the words in red. It seemed random to me—I didn’t know then that those were the words Jesus spoke. I can’t say I walked out of those services feeling overly inspired.

  Faith wasn’t something our family talked about much. I believed in God and tried to live right. I knew there was more to faith than that, but I was too invested in the things I wanted to do to take time to investigate it. Carrie, on the other hand, grew up going to church regularly. She pledged her life to Christ at a Campus Crusade meeting when she was fifteen and learned how to recite all the titles of the books in the Bible. Carrie definitely knew more about faith than I did. But neither of us was very committed to spiritual development in college. We were both pretty ignorant in terms of what God was really about.

  On that Friday at the beginning of my rookie year, I was nearly dressed in the locker room when Mongo walked past and looked at me. “Hey,” he said, “you comin’ to the study?”

  Stensrud was a veteran and I was a rookie. I didn’t want to disappoint him. And I was interested in finding out what these guys were up to. I decided “sometime” had just become “right now.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The defense meeting area was a large room filled with those chairs you see in classrooms with a desk that can flip up or down. When I walked in, the room had been partitioned by a divider. In the middle of our section, a handful of chairs had been arranged in a circle. I figured out that the tall man I didn’t recognize was the team chaplain.

  Greg Headington turned out to be a soft-spoken, down-to-earth guy with a sense of humor. He wasn’t stuffy or churchy, which appealed to me. More important, he spoke from the Bible and how it related to the life issues my teammates and I were dealing with on a day-to-day basis—how to treat your wife, what to do when your marriage feels shaky, how to handle fear of injury. I don’t remember now what he talked about that first day, but it got my attention enough to want to go back. I also was impressed that the players who attended, usually no more than five to ten guys, would talk openly about what they were struggling with. I began attending the Friday Bible studies and Sunday morning chapels Greg hosted for the Oilers.

  I also watched Mongo Stensrud. Like most defensive linemen, Stensrud was big and strong, six foot five and 280 pounds. He was a clean-shaven, corn-fed white guy from Iowa who’d joined the Oilers during the “Luv Ya Blue” era. He had a reputation as a wild man, always ready to party. He soon confirmed in our Bible study meetings that the rumors about his past were mostly true—during his early years in Houston, his marriage had apparently been on the brink of divorce. But then he’d found Jesus and his focus and life changed.

  What I found interesting was that even though Mongo’s character had changed, his overall personality hadn’t. He was still a goofball between plays in practice. You had to be careful walking back to the huddle—he’d flick you in a sensitive spot if you weren’t looking. Once, he said to me, “Hey, let’s get into a fight after this play.”

  “What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  Sure enough, after the next play ended, we were in the middle of the field, wrestling. Mongo did crazy stuff like that all the time. But once the ball was snapped, he went after it. Since he was a nose tackle and I was on the offensive line, we battled each other in practice every day. He definitely didn’t take it easy on me, which I respected.

  For some reason, Mongo and Gregg Bingham, a couple of veterans on defense, hung out often with Mike Munchak and me those first couple of years. As I spent time with Mongo, I saw that his passion for the Lord was real. He had a purpose and a peace that I wanted.

  The more I went to the Bible studies and chapel and talked with Greg, the more I realized that Jesus was the answer to the emptiness I’d been feeling. I started reading the Bible from the beginning. Though that generated a ton of questions, the story of God’s people and love for each of us made sense to me. Yeah, this is true, I thought. I know this is true.

  I don’t remember the exact words or moment, but sometime during that rookie year I prayed to Jesus, professing my belief in Him and asking Him to forgive my sins and direct my steps. I was still an immature believer, really just scratching the surface of my understanding of what it all meant. But I’d begun the journey to a spiritual relationship that would become the foundation of my life.

  It wasn’t as if I experienced a sudden, dramatic transformation. From the outside, the shift was barely noticeable. But as Carrie can explain, over time she began to detect that my deepening faith was leading to a few important and positive changes.

  I thought it was great that Bruce attended the team Bible studies. It was wonderful that the Oilers made that available to the players. He would come home and talk about some of their discussions and what he was learning. I’d always thought he was a Christian, but he’d never made it official, so of course I was thrilled when he told me he’d invited Christ into his life.

  It wasn’t that he suddenly figured out he’d been doing everything all wrong. We were already going to church every Sunday and we already had a fully committed marriage. But there were some subtle differences. He started sharing more with me in general and specifically what he was learning about the Lord. It took a few years, but he became more helpful around the house, doing the dishes or offering to go to the grocery store. They were small things, but I appreciated them. And he began an insatiable quest for biblical knowledge. He became a font of spiritual information.

  The biggest change I saw was an ever-growing peace. Bruce had a stressful job, but I could tell that his developing faith gave him new strength and comfort. And that gave me even more peace about our relationship because I think it takes three. It has to be you, your spouse, and th
e Lord for a marriage to work well. It’s not that I ever had any worries about our marriage or that the idea of divorce was even mentioned. When we said at our wedding, “to have and to hold for better or for worse,” we meant it. But we’ve had our struggles and trials like any couple. I don’t know how couples handle it if they don’t have the Lord. I’ve seen husbands and wives driven apart by their differences, yet when we face trials it usually seems to drive us closer. I give our relationship with the Lord all the credit for that.

  I had more new relationships to develop during those early years in our marriage. The first began on March 16, 1985, when Carrie gave birth to our first child, Steven Bruce Matthews.

  Carrie and I both wanted a large family. I knew how important family was to me and how much I loved having a sister and brothers. Carrie and I each grew up with four siblings. Carrie actually wanted eight kids when she was in high school, but figured the boys would take off once they heard that, so she cut the number to six. I really looked forward to being a parent.

  It was exciting when Steven was born. I couldn’t believe I was a dad. But it was suddenly humbling and left me feeling a little panicked. We were responsible for this little baby—just us. On the trip home from the hospital, I drove more carefully than I did on my driver’s test. Was I equipped to be a father? Even after nine months of getting ready for this moment, I felt totally unprepared.

  When we got home, we closed the shades and turned the lights off so Steven could sleep. Then I called my dad. “No, what are you doing?” he said. “You want the light and noise so he doesn’t sleep all day and stay awake all night.”