Alzado Retires From Pro Football; New Field Will Be Acting

Lyle Alzado, the one-time street fighter from Brooklyn who parlayed his abilities to inflict and endure pain into a 15-year career in the National Football League, announced his retirement from the game Wednesday in Beverly Hills.

The Raiders’ All-Pro defensive end said that the torn Achilles tendon that cut short his season last November was not the cause of his announcement.

“That didn’t play a role in my decision,” he said at a news conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “The injury is fine. I’ve been running and lifting. I had worked myself back into shape, but when you’re 36 years old there are things you just can’t do.

“I’m not the player I once was, and I’d just as soon go out now before I try to do things that I can’t do anymore.”

Alzado, who will turn 37 in two weeks, said he will concentrate on his acting career. He has been featured in a number of films, television series and commercials.

Raider Coach Tom Flores took the news philosophically, saying that the loss of his 6-foot 3-inch, 260-pound right end would hurt the Raiders but that he understood and accepted Alzado’s decision.

“It didn’t come as a surprise,” Flores said. “I did know that Lyle was thinking about it. He’s thought about retiring ever since we won the Super Bowl in Tampa (in January of 1984).

“I think he’s had plenty of time to consider his future. I don’t know that the injury was a big factor. He just decided that this was time for him to bow out and he had opportunities elsewhere that were very exciting and very challenging and I think that’s why he made the decision and I respect that decision.

“From a selfish point of view, I don’t think there’s any question but that he could help us. I would like to see him come back because he could still help us, even if it’s in a nonstarting role. He still has ability left. But like he said, he didn’t want to be second-best and he just felt it was time.”

Al Davis, the Raiders’ managing general partner, described Alzado as “one of the greatest players ever to wear silver and black,” even though only four of his 15 NFL season were spent with the Raiders.

“We’ll miss him and we’ll miss his toughness,” Davis said. “You can replace ability over the years, but you can’t replace his toughness.”

Alzado said the decision to call it quits was not something that had kept him awake nights.

“Not really, I didn’t agonize very much,” he said. “I just wanted to do the right thing at the right time. This was the time to move on.”

Alzado was a fourth-round draft choice by the Denver Broncos in 1971. The Broncos discovered him at Yankton College in North Dakota and turned him into one of the most feared defensive players in the game. Alzado, named the league’s defensive player of the year in 1977, was a leader of Denver’s Orange Crush defense that helped the Broncos reach the Super Bowl in 1978.

The following year, however, he was traded to the Cleveland Browns after a contract dispute with the Broncos. It was while he was with Cleveland that he became involved in the entertainment industry, performing in his first movies and feeling the lure of Hollywood.

Still, he remained as outspoken as ever, even offering advice to other would-be performers.

“Hollywood is OK as long as you keep everything in perspective,” he said. “If you get carried away and think you’re a star, that’s when it can eat you alive. You should never get so caught up in things that you think you’re better than other people.”

Alzado never thought he was better than others. But similarly, he never thought others were better than he, either.

He is likely to be remembered as a player who, to put it mildly, enjoyed the physical side of the game more than most. Head slaps were a favorite tactic, and he never said no to a fight, on or off the field. All of which is one reason he fit in so well with the Raiders after being traded to them for an eighth-round draft choice before the 1982 season.

“We’re all camping out on the edge of reality,” he once said of his Raider teammates. “It’s a relationship made in hell.”

But despite his image as a belligerent, bearded Hell’s Angel in cleats, Alzado has another side. His humanitarian work with children seldom received the attention his on-the-field exploits did.

Flores saw that core the afternoon in Tampa that the Raiders won the NFL title.

“It was obvious we’d won the game,” Flores said, “and I was walking along the sideline and I looked up and here he is with tears mounting in his eyes because he’s finally become a champion.”

If not yet a star.