Lyle Alzado Might Have Been the Toughest Raider Ever

The Las Vegas Raiders have had many tough players, perhaps none tougher than the great defensive end Lyle Alzado.

The Las Vegas Raiders could use a number of things moving forward and one is an additional dose of toughness.

The Raiders have had that element in abundance throughout much of their 64-year history, especially in Oakland and Los Angeles, and one player who had more than his share of it was defensive end Lyle Alzado.

The 6-3, 255-pound Alzado came to the Raiders in a trade with the Cleveland Browns in 1982, when he was NFL Comeback Player of the Year, after also playing for the Denver Broncos, but despite 11 previous seasons in the NFL, he is remembered mostly for his five years in Silver and Black.

“If me and King Kong went into the alley, only one of us would come out,” Alzado once said. “And it wouldn’t be the monkey.”

Alzado was a member of a dysfunctional family in Cedarhurst, N.Y., on Long Island, and after receiving no scholarship college offers out of high school, he went to Yankton College in South Carolina.

Incredibly, from there he became a fourth-round draft choice (No. 79 overall) by the Broncos in 1971 and became part of the famous “Orange Crush” defense.

"I remember when the draft was, Jan. 24, 1971,” Alzado said years later. “It started at 9 a.m. I was in college in Yankton. I got up at 5 that morning and went over to the athletic director’s office and never left. I sat there all day.

“At four that afternoon I was still in that same chair when the phone rang. It was (Coach) Lou Saban. He said: ‘Lyle, you are now a Bronco.’ I was so happy I knocked the projector off a table running out. I broke the door. It was the happiest moment of my life. I was the 79th player taken.”

Again, while Alzado played well with the Broncos and Browns, his most memorable seasons probably came with the Raiders, whom he helped win Super Bowl XVIII, 38-9, over the heavily favored Washington Redskins at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Fla., when he helped shut down running back John Riggins and quarterback Joe Theismann.

Before the game, Alzado said: “I’m going to tear off Riggins’ head. … I'll promise to pick up his head if he promises to take the cleat marks off my chest.”

Alzado is responsible for the NFL rule that makes it not only a penalty, but an automatic disqualification, to rip off an opposing player’s helmet after he did that to tackle Chris Ward of the New York Jets and threw the helmet during a 1982 AFC Divisional Playoff Game.

“He held (Ward) down, disarticulated his helmet and then threw it 20 yards down the field,” Raiders linebacker Matt Millen said.

That instantly became known as “The Lyle Alzado Rule.”

During his career, Alzado recorded nearly 1,000 tackles, 112.5 sacks, and 24 forced fumbles in 196 games and was named to the All-Pro team three times and was a two-time Pro Bowl selection, and ESPN described him as a “...violent, combative player known for his short temper.”

Said defensive end Greg Townsend, Alzado’s teammate with the Raiders: “The guy had a split personality. On the field, he had this tough image that he projected. Off the field he was the gentle giant. So caring, so warm, so giving.”

Alzado played on a Raiders defensive line that included future Hall of Famer Howie Long, who was a big fan of his teammate, but also nicknamed him “Three Mile Lyle,” after the nuclear facility at Three Mile Island because you never knew what Alzado was going to do.

“There are a lot of things I remember about Lyle, some good, some not so good,” Long said. “But I would say with the clock winding down in Tampa at the Super Bowl (in January 1984), here I am at 23 years old, and here's this guy who’s 34 and he’s never won a championship and the realization that all that struggle, all the years, all the injuries, the three different organizations he played for ... he’s finally going to be a world champion and what that meant to him at that time. That’s probably my most enduring memory.”

Especially when Alzado cried after the game.

Of course, Long and many others cried on May 14, 1992, when Alzado passed away from the effects of a brain tumor, which many people believe came from the anabolic steroids he admitted he took during his career.

That came after Alzado went on national television, having lost more than 100 pounds, and pleaded with youngsters not to do the things that he did.

It was only fitting that Alzado, after all he had been through, went down fighting.

The NFL Scouting Combine is scheduled for Feb. 28-March 6, 2023, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. On March 7, 2023, before 4 p.m. EST, is the club's deadline to designate Franchise or Transition Players.

March 13-15 is the free agent negotiation period. From 12 p.m. EST on March 13 and ending at 3:59:59 p.m. EST on March 15, clubs are permitted to contact and enter into contract negotiations with the certified agents of players who will become Unrestricted Free Agents upon the expiration of their 2022 Player Contracts at 4 p.m. EST on March 15.

The 2023 NFL Year and Free Agency period begins at 4 p.m. EST on March 15. The Raiders are expected to be significant players in the free-agent market this season.

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