Monster mashers

Sporting News, The, August 4, 1997 by Paul Attner

Here's your assignment. Get off the couch, shut off the television, walk away from the air conditioning, march outside and close the garage door. OK, stride to the end of the driveway. Now, run full speed into that door. Do it 100 times. Enjoy it. When you are done, when you are to the point where your body is bruised and fatigue is your friend, only then will you fully grasp what it is like to be a run-stuffer in the NFL, to spend a game within the interior of the defensive line, allowing yourself to be whacked around for the glory of the team and the pursuit of what?

"Fun," says the run-stuffer's poster boy, the sufficiently ugly and properly plump Tony Siragusa, a man whose belch and wit are among the NFL's elite.

If you think Siragusa has taken a few too many blindside belts to the helmet, you are starting to get a better picture of this outrageously huge, incredibly durable, more-than-slightly wacky breed that actually delights in a job that you wouldn't wish on, well, anyone you like even slightly. Entrance into this clan requires employment as a defensive tackle or nose tackle; no lesser types are allowed. Especially those glory guys who rush passers.

And in Siragusa, who once gave, a pep talk about green bananas before an AFC championship game, who kept snakes and tarantulas in his college dorm room, who drove away one teammate when four-month-old tater tots fell out of his locker, who trains in the offseason by lifting a brewskie as fequently as possible, who dated his wife 12 years and then proposed to her near his dad's grave, who took his $674 rookie signing bonus (after taxes), laid it on the bar and drank it up with his friends, you have the clan's most bizarre and most entertaining member -- and, sadly, one of the few remaining throwbacks to a breed of hilariously crude blue-collar players who once were so generously sprinkled throughout the NFL, spreading their shot-and-a-beer philosophical approach to life.

He is the Art Donovan of his generation, a charismatic good humor man who has invented a sack dance (the "Goose," in which he flaps his arms, trying to imitate wings, but looks more like a fatted cow hoping to fly) and isn't concerned one whit about how he sounds or what he says, as long as it is loud, funny and opinionated. He has also overcome a bad knee to rank among the elite run-stuffers in the league (see page 45). And no one at his position loves it any more, gives it more personality, has endured greater pain to stick with it and can convince you any better that playing bumper cars with 320-pound offensive linemen for three hours on fall Sundays is a down-and-grimy version of football heaven.

We are entering a run-stuffer's favorite offseason haunt. A restaurant. This one is Italian; it is located a few miles from Siragusa's hometown in Kenilworth, N.J. "Somebody's in my bleeping spot," says Siragusa, an East Coast, working-class kind of guy full of constant bluster whose normal conversation is littered with all types and varieties of obscenities, tossed off as frequently as you might say hello or goodby. He wheels his truck out of the front lot and into the back, edging it into a space normally used by the owners. We walk in through the back door and plop down with his friend Vinny Basile at a back-room table.

No use trying to rush around it. Run-stoppers have a common link. Food. In great quantities. most of which usually winds up in their guts and legs. Thighmasters aren't big sellers in their homes. Some of the younger guys, like Eric Swann, are trying to change the physical image of these mini-sumos by producing a honed, cut body actually fashioned through weightlifting. Thank God, he is in the minority. Now, Siragusa, there's a real prototype. He's listed at 320 pounds, but his former team, the Colts, always complained he was far heavier. How does 350 sound?

When Siragusa as single, he hired a chef to cook for him during the season, so he could consume his daily one pound of pasta in variety of presentations. On this day, when he asks for a side dish of spaghetti with meat sauce, he tells the waitress to make sure it is a small serving. "I won't tell them it is for you," she says.

"You know what my theory is about weight?" Siragusa begins. You soon find out he has lots of theories, including my favorite about retirement. He feels everyone has it backward. You work when you are young and can most enjoy the leisure life, and then you retire when you are old and can hardly hobble around. So he's determined to do it the right way; he's having as much fun as he can now -- he's only 30 -- and then when he gets older, he will take on a serious job, as if fighting off wham blocks from a charging, 250-pound fullback is a real belly laugh. And he has told his wife that when he dies, he wants her to put a smile on his face, place kegs at either end of the casket, throw the demnedest party you've ever seen and put up a tombstone that reads something like: "No Regrets Got It?"

That's why he spent the offseason, in between free-agent trips that resulted in his leaving the Colts after seven seasons and signing with the Revens for $6 million, doing the following: snorkeling, bear hunting, deep-sea fishing, snowmobiling, wild boar hunting, flying around the Florida Keys and Caribbean Island with a pilot friend, golfing, singing with Hootie and the Blowfish, buying boats, buying and selling houses and, oh yes, celebrating the birth of child No. 1, Samantha Rose.