by Mike Siani
“Marv loved to block,” said Stabler. “He used to say, ‘I get this nasty little thrill out of sticking my helmet into somebody’s stomach.’ Then he’d chuckle.”
Stabler continues.
“He was also an emotional player who took losses harder than most.”
“One night after a loss, a group of us were heading for Clancy’s, a restaurant in Jack London Square. We had started at Al’s Cactus Room and hit another bar or so before reaching San Francisco, and Marv was ready to break something. Loud music was pouring out of the open doors of a rock n roll club in the square, and Marv hollered, ‘Turn that shit down!’
“The rest of us kept walking, thinking nothing of it. Then someone yelled, ‘Fuck you!’ and went at Marv—a big mistake on that man’s part. Marv grabbed him by the throat, threw him up against the wall, and popped him. Another guy tried to sucker punch Marv, missed, and also got himself punched out.
“After that, his aggressions apparently all out [of his system], the man who had gone to Colgate on an academic scholarship joined us in Clancy’s for a nice dinner.
“But Marv could get a little crazy on the field, too, particularly when we played the Chiefs.
“Kansas City was always the toughest competition in our division until the late 1970s, when Denver came along. Kansas City also had the best middle linebacker in the AFC, if not in the entire league. Willie Lanier weighed about 240 and hit like he weighed 260. Marv went to war with Lanier every time we played KC because our fullback plays were all off-tackle and up the middle.
“Marv would take a pill that we called ‘rat turds’ from a Coke cup, get that jaw working, get that glazed look in his eyes, and just hammer away at Lanier. And late in the games, when our running attack picked up a lot of yards because defenses tended to be beaten down from all the pounding by then, Marv would start yelling at Lanier when we broke the huddle. He would point at Willie and yell, ‘Here I come! I’m coming right at you, Willie!’
“And that’s where the play would be going! I’d scream, ‘Shut the fuck up, Marv!’
“Marv got into it with another middle linebacker in one game after receiving a couple of cheap shots in pileups. He stood up and yelled, ‘I’m gonna get you if I have to bomb the bus you’re on!’”
DARYLE LAMONICA: THE MAD BOMBER
Quarterback Daryle Lamonica was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the twenty-fourth round of the 1963 AFL draft. At 6’ 3”, 215 pounds, Daryle played four years with the Bills before being traded to the Raiders where he would finish out the next eight years before retiring at the end of the 1974 season.
Kenny Stabler and Daryle Lamonica were two different quarterbacks with two different styles of play. According to Stabler, Daryle didn’t get the nickname “The Mad Bomber” for nothing.
“Daryle was known as The Mad Bomber—a big, strong guy who would throw the ball long and throw it often. He had come to Oakland from Buffalo in 1967, led the AFL in passing, and took the Raiders to their second Super Bowl. He played behind a good offensive line and had excellent receivers in Warren Wells, Freddy Biletnikoff, and Billy Cannon.
“Daryle was not as popular as George Blanda was with his teammates. Blanda was a man’s man and everybody respected him. Lamonica was aggressive, had a tremendous ego, and was always talking about how well his outside business deals were going. His personality did not sit well with some of his teammates. I liked him because he always took time to answer any questions I had. But we had different styles of play.
“In my opinion, Lamonica was a good thrower, not a good passer. Up until 1970, most teams stayed in man-to-man defenses. But later, teams began mixing in zone coverage. Daryle could not adjust because he was not a touch passer.
“But Lamonica was the starting quarterback, Blanda was the backup, and I accepted the role of third stringer. The 1970 season was devoted to learning and getting to know my teammates.”
JOHN MATUSZAK: THE TOOZ
Missouri defensive end John Matuszak was the first pick of the Houston Oilers in the 1972 NFL draft. The 6’ 8”, 280-pound Matuszak played one year with the Houston before spending a year in the WFL with the Houston Texans. From there he found himself with the Kansas City Chiefs, but that only lasted for two years. Like with other misfits and rebels, the Raiders signed John to a contract in 1976 (after the Chiefs had traded him to the Redskins where he didn’t last through training camp)—even though he had a long list of former coaches, former teams, behavioral problems, and substance abuse issues.
A week following his release from Washington, Matuszak received a call from Al Davis.
“I received a call from the Raiders telling me that Al Davis wanted to meet with me. He was interested in signing me with Oakland. With all the crap Al had probably heard about me, I’m sure he wanted to see if I had three eyes and a pair of heads.
“I was a little nervous about meeting Al since I had had two previous encounters with the team: I bloodied one of their quarterbacks and cursed their sideline. In both incidents, I was playing for the Chiefs.
“In one game, I tackled Clarence Davis just as he was about to run out of bounds. It was a hairline call that could have gone either way. But John Madden went haywire. He started screaming at the refs, demanding that they call a penalty. If the hit had been obvious, I would have minded my own business. But I didn’t think John had reasonable grounds for arguing so wildly on such a borderline call. Obscenities were exchanged between me and the Raiders and I ended up giving them the ‘we’re number one’ sign—to no one in particular.
“My other run in with the Raiders was when they replaced Kenny Stabler with George Blanda. George was forty-eight years old and at the end of his career. When the ball was snapped, his O-line broke down and I busted through for a sack. The shot was clean—helmet to helmet—but George went down hard. There was blood running down his face and he had to be helped off the field. I was worried on how the Raiders and Al Davis would take that.”
“Upon meeting Al, he said that whatever problems I’d had in the past didn’t mean a damn thing as far as he was concerned. He knew I could play in this league and that’s all that really mattered. He couldn’t use me in that week’s opener against Pittsburgh, but he would definitely find me a spot on the team. He shook my hand and said he was glad to have me as a Raider.
“I was flabbergasted, close to tears. I probably would have hugged him, but I didn’t want to get fired before I was hired. I signed for eleven thousand, five hundred dollars.”
John Madden asked Art Thoms what he thought about Matuszak as a player.
“Madden asked me about Matuszak. He asked if I thought John was any good. I said, ‘Every time we see him play, we laugh at him. He just can’t do anything.’
“I didn’t recommend him. They signed him anyway. He didn’t have a lot of moves, but he definitely had a lot of power.”
“At that point, with all the injuries, we really needed a defensive end,” said Villapiano. “Al kept bringing in these other people, and I kept saying, ‘Al, they’re horrible! I got a guy in Bowling Green named ‘Mad Dog’ MacKenzie. He’s selling for Carnation Foods. He’s as good as these guys. Can we bring in Mad Dog? Give me someone who can fuckin’ play! I’m out there on an island!’
“So one day Al calls me and says, ‘I got your guy: John Matuszak. But I’m going to get him a house next to your house. And I want you to watch over him. He’s fucking wild.’
“And then we finally started playing some fucking football. And now we had a fucking defense. He was perfect for that team.”
Matuszak never pulled punches.
“I’m the kind of guy who’s all or nothing. I mean, if I’m going to go out and get screwed up, I do it all the way.”
Dolphins’ defensive tackle Manny Fernandez remembers an incident with Matuszak at a bar.
“It was in January of 1974. The Dolphins were in town (Houston, Texas) to play the Vikings in the Super Bowl, and me and a couple of other guys walked into a bar cal
led the Sports Page. As we made our way into the darkened part of the bar, we heard a loud bang! It was Matuszak. He shot a hole in the ceiling to honor the entrance of the guys going to the Super Bowl.”
When John Madden confronted Ted Hendricks as to whether or not Matuszak would be a good fit for the Raiders, Ted replied, “Look around you, John. What’s one more going to hurt?”
“It’s strange,” said Matuszak. “When people expect you to be wild, talk about you being wild, encourage you to be wild, you begin to be wild. It’s almost as if you become your image. There were times when I tried to live up to other peoples’ expectations, be the life of other peoples’ parties, and I wound up getting hurt for it.
“But I don’t want that misconstrued. Ultimately, anything I did was my decision.”
One of the linebackers on the team was Jeff Barnes. Like many others in the Raiders organization, he was a little strange. Matuszak recalls two stories about Jeff.
“Once there was a power outage at the Coliseum after one of our practices. The entire stadium went black, including the players’ locker room. Everyone was bumping and fumbling around the locker room when a voice came out of the darkness. It was Jeff’s.
“‘Shoot.’ He said. ‘I wonder if the lights on my car are out.’
“Another story has to do with an airplane. On a flight to a road game, our plane had just landed when, all of a sudden, it was approached by a man driving one of those luggage trucks. This guy was coming up on one of the wings awfully fast, but we all figured he would brake in time. He didn’t. He ran right into the tip of the wing. One of the guy’s spoke with the pilot a few weeks later and the pilot said the driver had caused something like $75,000 worth of damage. He was also fired from his job. Just after the incident, Jeff put it all in his own unique perspective.
“‘Boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s a good thing we weren’t in the air when that truck hit us.’
“Another dancer, another different drummer.”
* * *
When the Raiders broke training camp in 1979, Coach Tom Flores asked Stabler if he would room with Matuszak.
“I went over to his office, wondering what was up. I found Tom pacing around with his head down, looking concerned.
“‘Must be serious,’ I said.
“Tom looked up at me and asked, ‘Who’re you rooming with in Oakland, Snake?’
“‘Just like last year, Tom,’ I said. ‘Nobody.’
“‘Well, wound you mind rooming with Matuszak?’ Flores said. ‘We’d like him to move out of the trunk of his car.’
“I laughed.
“‘It’s no joke. Last season, when he wasn’t living with some woman, I hear he actually spent some nights in his goddamn car. Now we need performance out of John this year and it’ll help if he’s settled in one place. Will you take him in?’
“‘Will I qualify for hazardous-duty pay, Tom?’
“Flores smiled. ‘You’re about the only guy on this team who can handle him, Tooz.’
“‘I don’t know if anyone can handle The Tooz.’ I said, remembering our loss to Denver in the 1977 playoffs.”
“John had partied the pregame night away. When he got back to the hotel in the morning, he decided he didn’t like the window draperies, so he tore them down—rod and all. A hotel employee tipped the Broncos that Matuszak was in bad shape and the Broncos ran out the clock over him. They had Tooz gasping for oxygen in that high altitude the whole final quarter. That wasn’t the reason we lost, but John was real depressed on the flight home.
“I like John. He’s basically a good guy,” I said. “And I know he felt bad about that 1977 playoff game. I don’t think that’ll happen again.
“‘We can’t afford to have it happen again.’ Tom said.
“‘I’ll see what I can do.
“I thought it might be kind of fun. I never had a 280-pound pet before.
“Although I’m obsessive about keeping my cars, duds, and living quarters organized, everything neat and polished, I told John he was welcome to join me in the condo.”
“‘Hey, Snake, that’s damn nice of you,’ he said, ‘But I’ll have to see the place before I decide.’
“‘You have other offers?’
“‘The Tooz always has offers for his person,’ he said, pushing out his chest.
“The moment John looked through the sliding doors and saw the hot tub, he cried, ‘Goddamn, Snake, this is me!’
“He got right on the telephone. And before we had even unpacked, The Tooz, myself, and three airline stewardesses were all cavorting naked in the hot tub.
“John began tossing a girl into the air and catching her in the water. He grabbed a second girl, who couldn’t have weighed over 100 pounds soaking wet, which she was. When he threw her skyward, the girl must have sailed up about eight feet. The Tooz gave an appreciative roar, and the girl let out a piercing scream. An upper floor window came open and a woman yelled, ‘A little quiet, please!’
“John hollered, ‘Quiet this, you . . .’ and I reached out and clamped a hand over his mouth.
“‘Tooz, we don’t want to get thrown out of here the first day,’ I said. ‘We can have fun without riling the neighbors.’
“He floated on his back and waved his dick at the upper window, whispering, ‘Quiet this, neighbor.’
Matuszak craved attention—and he knew how to get it.
“Typically, John would go out wearing a flashy multihued shirt, red, white, and blue suspenders, tight jeans, flip-flops or cowboy boots, and a pair of New Wave wraparound sunglasses, usually chartreuse,” said Stabler. The attention didn’t stop there.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve seen The Tooz walk into a bar, grab his shirt at the chest with both hands, rip it open to the waist, and growl like a lion at the top of his lungs. That tended to get everyone’s attention.
“He particularly enjoyed stomping into the gay bars in San Francisco and scaring the shit out of everyone in them. Eyes glaring and muscles bulging, he would let out that roar and it would rattle glasses on the bar and just freeze everyone solid. He loved to see fear on people’s faces.
“His favorite cry when he entered a bar with me was, ‘Stabler will arm wrestle anybody in here for $5.00!’
“‘You crazy bastard,’ I’d say. ‘You arm wrestle!’
“He never did because nobody would challenge him.
“One night we went into a quiet San Francisco restaurant. An attractive and petite young woman wearing a tailored suit was seated at the bar near the entrance. As John walked by, he scooped her up onto his shoulder, saying, ‘Get up there, little lady.’ He kept walking until he reached another pretty and diminutive woman at the bar. ‘You too,’ he said and hoisted her onto his other shoulder. He carried them to a table in back and gently sat them down.”
“‘Now, what would you two gorgeous girls like to drink with The Tooz and his partner here, The Snake?’ he asked, charming the women who ended up at the condo with us later that evening.
“At a disco one night, we met two young women and decided to take them to a quiet bar across Jack London Square. John picked both of them up on his shoulders and we walked down the street. Approaching the open door to the bar, John bent down and the girls ducked too. But they couldn’t get low enough. One girl screamed as John crossed the threshold, bumping both girls’ heads on the doorframe.
“‘You big dummy! Couldn’t you see we wouldn’t fit?’ one girl said.
“‘And didn’t you hear me yell?’ said the other girl, holding her head.
“‘I’m used to women yelling around me,’ John said, rubbing her head. ‘I’m sorry, but hey, you got to play with the small hurts, as Vince Lombardi used to say.’
I don’t think that John and Vince Lombardi would have hit it off very well. John didn’t go much for discipline and that included his eating habits.
Matuszak wasn’t exactly what one would call a healthy eater. John may have put away copious amounts of liquor, but when it
came to food, he wasn’t a real big eater.
“We had to keep the condo liquor cabinet pretty well stocked, but luckily I didn’t have to keep a wide variety of food in the fridge for The Tooz,” said Stabler.
“His meals basically consisted of Cheese Whiz smeared on bagels. That’s about what he lived on—Cheese Whiz, bagels, and Crown Royal. Not exactly The Breakfast of Champions.
“He used to tell me all the time that I shouldn’t smoke. He once told me, ‘It’s a terrible habit. Take up pocket pool instead.’
New experiences were plentiful when The Tooz was in town.
Sadly, John Matuszak died of a heart attack on June 17, 1989. He was only thirty-eight-years-old at the time.
On Sunday, June 25, 1989, I was asked by the New York Daily News to write an article about how I remember John. Here is that article.
The Two Toozes: Fans Came First for Big John
It seems ironic that several months ago I sat watching my friend and former teammate John Matuszak on a TV show. He was playing the role of a veteran football player in the twilight of his career, trying to retain his position on the team by using steroids, who then tragically dies of a massive heart attack on the field.
John had become a fairly good actor. He made you believe in his character and that such a thing could happen in pro football. But that was Hollywood, that was make believe. If you don’t get it right the first take, you film it again and again if necessary.
In real life, you don’t always get a second chance. Such as a week ago, Saturday night, for my friend ‘Tooz,’ when he died of a real heart attack in Los Angeles.
Larger Than Life
My first reaction was disbelief. After all, how could such a huge, strong man succumb to a simple heart attack? He was in perfect physical condition and could have still invoked fear in opposing NFL quarterbacks.
But yet it was true. Big John Matuszak was dead at age thirty-eight.
It’s difficult to speculate what killed John Matuszak. As it stands now, the county coroner’s office is conducting tests to find answers.
Perhaps it was those years of hard living that had finally caught up to him. I’d known John for almost twenty years, first meeting him while playing against Tampa University my senior year at Villanova, then as an opponent and teammate in the NFL.