John Matuszak and the Oakland Raiders: The Full Story of “The Tooz”
Six-foot-eight, 280 pounds, number one pick in the entire 1973 NFL Draft – and no team in the league wanted him by 1976. Then Al Davis made a phone call, and everything changed. John Matuszak didn’t just play for the Oakland Raiders. He became the physical embodiment of what that franchise stood for during the most feared stretch of its history.
From Milwaukee to the NFL Draft – How “The Tooz” Got There
Matuszak grew up in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee, where classmates called him a beanpole. He was gawky and awkward as a kid, which apparently motivated him in a specific direction. By his senior year of high school he threw the shot put 58 feet 11 inches to win the Wisconsin Class A state championship. That’s not a figure that comes up often, but it tells you everything about how he channeled being told he didn’t fit.
His college career was a mess, though not the kind that should have scared anyone away from his talent. He started at Iowa Central Community College, got recruited to Missouri by Dan Devine, played one season as a tight end, rarely got on the field, lost his scholarship when Devine left for Green Bay, and transferred to the University of Tampa. At Tampa he moved back to defensive line, where he’d always been most natural, made All-American in 1972, and in his last college game helped Tampa beat Kent State 21-18 in the Tangerine Bowl. Kent State that day had Jack Lambert on the roster, Gary Pinkel, and a young Nick Saban who suffered a season-ending injury in October. Matuszak was the best player on the field anyway.
Houston selected him first overall in 1973. He stood 6-8 and weighed north of 280 pounds. The pick made sense on paper.
Three Teams in Three Years: Too Wild to Handle
His time in Houston lasted one season. The problems started almost immediately – Matuszak and coach Sid Gillman didn’t get along, which is a polite way of saying the relationship was a disaster from week one. By 1974, while still under contract with the Oilers, Matuszak signed with the Houston Texans of the World Football League. Within five minutes of his first game in a Texans uniform, roughly 25 sheriffs converged on the sideline with a court order. Matuszak later said he didn’t fully understand what was happening and didn’t want a confrontation, so he asked to play – which made everything worse. The judge ruled he’d breached his Oilers contract and sent him back. The Oilers promptly traded him to Kansas City for Curley Culp and a first-round pick. That trade looks terrible for Houston in retrospect: Culp became a Hall of Famer under Bum Phillips.
Kansas City was its own chapter. His wife at the time tried to run him over with her car after an argument. He fled through a cemetery using gravestones as cover. On a separate occasion he mixed sleeping pills with alcohol, his heart stopped, and head coach Paul Wiggin physically pounded on his chest until a heartbeat returned. Wiggin saved his life. The Chiefs released him anyway.
Washington picked him up in 1976. George Allen cut him during preseason. Asked why, Allen said simply: “Vodka and Valium, the breakfast of champions.”
Al Davis, John Madden, and the Last-Chance Call That Started Everything
Matuszak went home to Milwaukee after Washington cut him. He was thinking about the Canadian Football League. The 1976 Raiders had a different problem: injuries had wiped out their defensive line. Tony Cline, Horace Jones, and Art Thoms were all out. Madden needed to switch to a 3-4 alignment, which meant finding a big, physical defensive end who could anchor it. Al Davis called Matuszak.
Phil Villapiano, the Raiders linebacker who played next to him, put it plainly later: “Kansas City and Washington, they could not handle the Tooz, but he fit right in with us. He was the missing piece that we needed to solidify our defense. I loved playing next to that monster – total muscle, loved to hit, needed a job, knew it was his last stop. He was the perfect Raider.”
Madden’s solution to managing Matuszak was to have Ken Stabler take him in as a roommate in Alameda. The thinking was that someone nicknamed “the Snake” would be a stabilizing influence. Stabler later recalled that his idea of a good roommate didn’t involve Cheez Whiz, bagels, Crown Royal, and Quaaludes as a late-night menu. He just hoped to make it through the season. They both did.
What Matuszak Actually Did on the Football Field
The sack didn’t become an official NFL stat until 1982, which is one reason Matuszak’s career numbers don’t reflect his actual impact. The reconstructed total across his nine seasons is 48.5 sacks. With the Raiders specifically, he played 87 regular season games, started 72, and recovered four fumbles. Those are dry numbers for a player whose real value was disruption – his ability to collapse a pocket and force quarterbacks into bad decisions before the ball ever left their hand.
He was 6-8 and could bench press over 400 pounds. In 1978, with nothing better to do in the offseason, he entered the World’s Strongest Man competition weighing 308 pounds. He hadn’t trained for it. He placed ninth. The story of that competition – a professional football player who didn’t prepare, heavier than he’d ever been, finishing ninth in the world – is very on-brand for the man.
Super Bowl XI, January 1977, Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The Raiders beat the Vikings 32-14. Matuszak and Ted Hendricks shut down Chuck Foreman and the Minnesota running game so completely that the game wasn’t competitive past halftime. Super Bowl XV, January 1981, New Orleans. The Raiders beat the Eagles 27-10. The night before that game, Matuszak was caught out at 3 a.m. in the French Quarter. His explanation: he was there to make sure none of his teammates got into trouble. The fine was paid. The championship was won.
“Tooz Day” and the Mythology of the Man Off the Field
Wednesday nights during the Raiders season were “Tooz Day.” It started informally – after the Monday rest day, with five days until the next game, Matuszak declared Wednesday the appropriate night for teammates to gather at Bay Area nightclubs. The Brass Rail, Pier 29 in Alameda, Clancy’s in Oakland’s Jack London Square, Uppy’s (Gene Upshaw’s place). These weren’t quiet dinners.
Tom Flores, who coached the Raiders to Super Bowl XV, asked Stabler to let Matuszak move in with him because Matuszak had been essentially living out of his car. Stabler, himself not exactly known for monastic habits, agreed. The arrangement didn’t calm Matuszak down. It mostly meant Stabler had firsthand knowledge of how much Crown Royal was involved.
There’s a story from Super Bowl XI week that tends to get buried under the wilder anecdotes. Matuszak announced he’d be out every night that week at Southern California bars – not partying, he clarified, but protecting his teammates. One night he found wide receiver Cliff Branch about to be attacked by a group outside a bar. When Matuszak appeared, the group scattered. “Cliff is a big part of what we do and we needed him,” Matuszak said afterward. That was the other side of the Tooz that didn’t make as many headlines.
His Back, His Painkillers, and the End of His Playing Career
Matuszak’s career didn’t end because of behavior. It ended because of his back. A herniated disc sent him to injured reserve for the entire 1982 season – the first year the Raiders played in Los Angeles after the franchise moved. Doctors cleared him to return in 1983, then a second injury in a freak accident during rehab set him back again. He retired rather than keep chasing a roster spot that wasn’t there anymore.
He said something once, in the context of painkiller use during his playing years, that reads differently now than it probably sounded then: “Painkillers are a way of life in the NFL. You sit out a game and your replacement could steal your job, so you play with the pain – which sometimes leads to even more injuries.” That quote is worth sitting with. The NFL’s relationship with pain management, prescription drugs, and chronic injury in that era is a lot of what eventually killed John Matuszak. He knew the system and described it plainly years before it caught up with him.
North Dallas Forty, Sloth, and 33 Film and TV Credits
Matuszak had wanted to act since he was a boy and watched James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He started getting opportunities while still playing. His first major role came in 1979 – North Dallas Forty, a film about the NFL’s darker interior, where he played O.W. Shaddock. It was a reasonable role for a man who knew that world from the inside.
Caveman followed in 1981, with Ringo Starr. The Ice Pirates. One Crazy Summer. Dozens of TV guest spots across M*A*S*H, Miami Vice, The A-Team, The Dukes of Hazzard, Silver Spoons, Perfect Strangers. He had a recurring part in Hollywood Beat in 1985, playing a large gay informant whose business was used by undercover cops. He threw himself into the work.
But it’s Sloth that people remember. The Goonies, 1985. The makeup took five hours to apply every single day of filming. One eye was mechanically operated by remote control from off-set – Matuszak had to time his own blinks to match it, counting down from three on cue from a crew member. The cast was told not to get him wet outside the pirate ship scenes because rewetting the prosthetics would cost a full day of production. The kids accidentally soaked him anyway. Filming stopped for the day. In several scenes, Sloth wears an Oakland Raiders T-shirt – not a costume decision someone made in a boardroom, but a deliberate nod to where Matuszak came from. The character became one of the most recognizable figures in a decade full of memorable films, and the man underneath the five hours of latex was a two-time Super Bowl champion who nobody wanted three years before he won his first ring.
June 17, 1989
Matuszak had moved to Hollywood full-time after retiring. His back still bothered him – it had never fully healed, and the chronic pain had followed him out of football the way it follows most players who play through major injuries for years. He was managing it with prescription medication.
On the morning of June 17, 1989, his girlfriend called for an ambulance. He was 38 years old. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office ruled the cause of death as acute propoxyphene intoxication – an accidental overdose of Darvocet, the prescription painkiller he was using for his back. Contributing factors listed in the report: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart, and bronchopneumonia. Cocaine was also found in his system.
He didn’t make it to the hospital. He died en route from his Hollywood home to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.
A few weeks before he died, a Sports Illustrated reporter ran into Matuszak at Miceli’s Restaurant in Hollywood. Matuszak invited him and his family to join him for dinner. They talked about the old days with the Silver and Black. The reporter noted it was a Tuesday night – Tooz Day, of course.
The Hall of Fame Question, and Why It Doesn’t Fully Resolve
Matuszak has not been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The argument against is straightforward: one All-Pro selection, no Pro Bowl appearances, a career complicated by off-field issues, and statistics that were only partially tracked during his peak years. The argument for is more complicated to assemble but not without substance. Forty-eight and a half career sacks, two Super Bowl rings, a defensive presence that multiple coaches and teammates identified as the missing piece in Oakland’s championship run.
The sack-tracking gap is the most legitimate grievance. Matuszak played the majority of his best football before 1982, when the NFL didn’t record sacks at all. His 48.5 career number is reconstructed from film and play-by-play records, which means it may be low and it certainly isn’t comparable to players from the modern era on equal statistical footing. Whether that’s enough to carry a Hall of Fame case is genuinely unclear, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being confident about something that doesn’t have a clean answer.
What’s harder to argue is his place in the specific story of the Raiders. The Oakland teams of the late 1970s and early 1980s were called the Evil Empire – a franchise that collected players other organizations couldn’t control and turned them into champions. Matuszak wasn’t one of many players who fit that identity. He was the loudest, largest, most visible proof that the identity was real. Phil Villapiano called him the missing piece. Tom Flores tried to manage him through Ken Stabler. Al Davis sought him out when everyone else had given up. Three different people with three different relationships to the franchise, and all three understood something that the rest of the NFL had missed.
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