The Goose

tony siragusa has some tough love for the nfl, wimpy quarterbacks, women who work and president bush

Tony "the Goose" Siragusa proves there is room in the pantheon of American sex symbols for the full-figured man. Siragusa, all 340 pounds of him, is our standard of football manhood because he plays down and dirty with pulverizing effectiveness and because he isn't skinny, ripped, pretty or humble. Also because when he's not living for football, the Baltimore Ravens' right defensive tackle lives for all-you-can-eat buffets, mud wrestling contests and bar stools.

The Goose is a beautiful slob with a coal-dust football sensibility out of the Fifties. He's not merely the bedrock of the Ravens but also much of the team's personality, which is a good thing since the team's best player is a baleful linebacker with a plea-bargain conviction for obstructing justice in a double-murder investigation. The fact is, Siragusa is as much in his element on Friday nights as he is on Sunday afternoons. That is when he hosts a magnificently chaotic radio show from the Barn, a Baltimore sports bar, mingling with Ravens fans dressed in push-up bras and purple bikini bottoms, as well as strippers who come and dance "the Goose" with him. As he is wont to say, "Can't get no better than that."

Siragusa is an engaging sod off field, but in the trench warfare of the NFL he is nobody's idea of a good time. Because of Siragusa's bulk, relentless drive and surprisingly quick feet, teams normally throw two or even three blockers at him. Siragusa sucks up the punishment, stacks up blockers, turns back ballcarriers, harries quarterbacks and makes everyone else on the defensive side of the ball better. Last season, the Ravens held their opponents to record lows in rushing yardage (60.6 per game) and points (10.3 per game). The reason? The logjam inside freed the Ravens' linebackers to attack the ball like rottweilers. In the AFC championship game, the Oakland Raiders came in rushing for 154 yards a game, tops in the league, and mustered all of 24 against the Ravens. Final score: 16-3, Baltimore. At the Super Bowl, the New York Giants conceded the trenches, rushing for only 66 yards. To tip off any defense that you'll be throwing is generally a bad idea; tipping off the Ravens is suicide. Final score: 34-7.

Last season also produced a classic Goose moment. Early in a game against the Tennessee Titans, Siragusa collided helmet-to-helmet with fullback Lorenzo Neal and lay motionless on the turf, feeling nothing in his arms and legs. At the hospital, he was told his spinal cord was bruised and that he should chill out in bed for a while. Then he regained feeling and was out the door and back to the stadium, where he reentered the game in the second half. But, then, Siragusa seems to defy the laws of science, including gravity. At 34, he walks pigeon-toed, both knees having been ravaged. One knee has no anterior cruciate ligament, the other is held together by a ligament from a cadaver. Siragusa only shrugs. As he sees it, the three great pleasures in life occur at a dining table, in a bedroom and on a football field, and you have to stand up for only one of them.

The Goose, whose game hasn't changed a crumb since he began his career in 1990 as a walk-on free agent with the Indianapolis Colts, is amused by the attention that he gets these days. But it comes with a price. In the second quarter of the AFC championship game, Siragusa crashed into the backfield and plopped onto Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon, pressing him to the turf just as Gannon released the ball. The hit separated Gannon's shoulder, drove him out of the game for a (continued on page 160) Tony Siragusa (continued from page 128) spell and severely limited his play the rest of the game. Clean hit, said the officials, none of whom threw a flag. Dirty hit, said the NFL later, after reviewing game film; it fined Siragusa $10,000. Bullshit, said Siragusa, who appealed the fine and lost and is still pissed about it. He's also pissed about other things the league has done lately because he takes them personally. Hell, if he didn't know better, Siragusa told writer Mark Ribowsky, he might begin to think that the NFL doesn't like him.

[Q] Playboy: What happened when you hit Rich Gannon?

[A] Siragusa: What people don't understand is that I had a compound fracture in a finger on my left hand. It was totally broken and all twisted around, but I played with it throughout the playoffs and the Super Bowl. When I came up on Gannon and tipped the ball, I was actually trying to turn and get my hand back down so I wouldn't land on it. They said that I drove my shoulder into him and bounced on him, which is bullshit. All I did was fall on him.

[Q] Playboy: And knocked him out of the game.

[A] Siragusa: Listen, I'll pay $10,000 any day to get a quarterback out of a game. That's what they tell us to do. My whole career coaches have told me, "Hit the quarterback! Hit the motherfucker as hard as you can!" But then you do and you get fined. God, there's such a pussy factor in the NFL now.

[Q] Playboy: Are all quarterbacks pussies?

[A] Siragusa: The majority of them are. Like when they run and they're going to get hit and they run out of bounds or slide down. You're a total puss to do that. They should call that the puss slide. Everybody in the stadium should start yelling, "Puss! Puss! Puss!" But the NFL watches out for them. They have a Big Daddy in the head office. No, make that a Big Mommy. They hide behind Big Mommy. Some offensive linemen are pusses, too, just not as many. There's a difference between a puss and a punk. A puss is a wimp. A punk is a guy who thinks he's a man but is really a puss. That's the case with a lot of offensive linemen.

[Q] Playboy: What is the biggest problem with the league?

[A] Siragusa: When I came into this league, there were a lot of personalities, guys who expressed themselves. The league didn't worry if your uniform was on right or if your socks were pulled up. Now it will actually fine you $7500 if your socks don't cover all of your skin, or if your shirt isn't tucked in or if the league patch isn't in the right place. It's like we have to be the Hitler Youth. Everyone's so uptight. Over the winter, each player on our team got to keep the Lombardi Trophy for three days. And they did not want to part with this trophy, man. It was like they thought I was going to crap on it. That's not even practical. It's not like it's a bowl, like that hockey thing.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do with it?

[A] Siragusa: I had it on display in my restaurant in Pine Brook, New Jersey for a couple of days and then I had it in a parade in my hometown of Kenilworth. Now, that was a thrill. Kenilworth is two miles wide, everybody there is a working man—plumbers, carpenters, truck drivers. All of my friends I went to high school with are still my best friends. And this is in the heart of Giants country. We had all these creeps come in screaming, "The Ravens suck!" Well, you know what? I brought the trophy back to Jersey because we beat the piss out of them.

[Q] Playboy: You had those guys beat before the game even began, didn't you?

[A] Siragusa: When you come out and you have a Ron Dayne, who will run over anybody, and you play him for one play in the Super Bowl, do you think we're getting a little bit of respect? It doesn't matter who we face. Pick any team. You see that fear on their faces. Because they know they just can't run on us. We have two guys in the middle, me and Sam Adams, who tie up three people. I don't care what you do. You're not going to block both of us. That means you have a linebacker running around free. Put a tight end on a linebacker? OK, then who's going to stop our ends, who both go 150 miles an hour? Besides, after 11 years I can smell the ball. I don't have to see it to know where it is.

[Q] Playboy: Who are some of those punk offensive linemen you spoke about?

[A] Siragusa: The cheap-shot artists who try to hurt you by going for your knee. [Cincinnati Bengals guard] Matt O'Dwyer is one. The former right tackle of the Cowboys, the old guy, Erik Williams. The Raiders as a team are known for it. Denver is full of them. What these guys don't understand is that, with offensive guys, you know where they're going to be at all times. And with our defense, it's going to happen that we'll get an interception. And when that happens, you better keep your head on a swivel because I'm coming after your knees.

[Q] Playboy: Besides these guys, do you truly hate anybody in football?

[A] Siragusa: Bill Tobin [former Colts director of operations] . He's a dick. I can't believe anyone ever thought that guy knows about football. He always tried to get me out of the lineup. They had only signed me because I told Ron Meyer, who was the coach, that I could snap the ball long—even though I never snapped a ball in my life. I got in when another guy got hurt, and they could never get me out, as much as they wanted to. Then Ted Marchibroda comes in as head coach and takes us to the AFC championship game, and a year later, Tobin fires him so he can bring in his old buddy Lindy Infante, who is not an NFL head coach— he's a coordinator at best. Ted was our heart, our core. You don't mess with that. And the players didn't want to play. You can't when the front office shows you they don't want to win. And they were always on me about my weight and there was no reason to stay, so I left. It's the best thing I ever did.

[Q] Playboy: Your father died when he was 48. How did that affect your life?

[A] Siragusa: My dad was a tough man who worked his ass off for his family. When I was at Pitt, I got an earring. I came home one weekend and he saw it and ripped it right out of my ear. The hardest thing for me was that he died in my arms. I was home from Pitt another time and he had a heart attack at our home. I tried to give him CPR but he was gone. I will never get that out of my head. The worst thing is that my father never got to do all the things he wanted to do. He was always searching. He drove a cement truck, but he also worked for General Dynamics and designed parts for the Trident submarine. And he played guitar in a rock-and-roll band, the Rock-atones. I saw them play in Atlantic City once with Chuck Berry, man. They were huge. And now I have that same burning desire in my gut to do as much as I can before the expiration date on my head comes up. I've gone wild boar hunting, I've gone deep-sea diving, I've dived with sharks, I've gone up in little rickety planes and done rollovers.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like you have a death wish.

[A] Siragusa: Hell, I think I'm going to live to be 100. But I've also told my wife that whenever my number is up, I want an open bar at my funeral and I want them to put a smile on my face and bury me in a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt with a keg and a sign that says no regrets, none at all.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you once take a deer you bagged into the locker room?

[A] Siragusa: Just the head. Because my teammates didn't believe I killed one. So I put the thing's head in a bag and took it to practice. I mean, don't ever doubt me. They also didn't believe I killed 40 snow geese. I took all the heads and put one in each of their lockers, oozing blood and brains and everything. They were all grossed out, but they'll never doubt me again.

[Q] Playboy: Does winning a Super Bowl make a man horny?

[A] Siragusa: If you're asking if I had sex that night, of course I did. That was a hell of a day. That morning, my wife told me she was pregnant with our third kid. I'll tell you one thing, winning a Super Bowl makes you better-looking. I'm much better-looking to a lot of people today than I was last year at this time.

[Q] Playboy: What attracted you to your wife?

[A] Siragusa: Her ass. I'm an ass man and my wife was a gymnast, so she has an unbelievable ass. It's great being married to a gymnast. She bounces around, does a couple of flips and lands on me.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of women do you like?

[A] Siragusa: The ones who have killer bodies and minds to go with them. A lot of women are shallow and have nothing to say, like cheerleaders.

[A] That's what's great about porn. You can look at women with killer bodies and no minds and not have to listen to them talk. Smart women are great, they can do anything, but they should never put a career before raising a family. Don't have kids and go to work. Stay home.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Bush?

[A] Siragusa: Oh, I love bush. I'd do anything for a good bush. Actually, I would have voted for Bush, if I'd voted, but Bill Clinton's my man because he don't give a shit what anybody thinks of him. Ray Lewis is like that, too. That's the best way to be. That's when you accomplish the most. If you worry about what people think, you'll never do a goddamn thing in your life. In the end, pissing people off gets you a lot further.

The should call that the puss slide. Everybody in the stadium should start yelling, "Puss! Puss! Puss!"