John Matuszak
John Matuszak
Defensive End

John Matuszak

"Tuesday was his night out every week and maybe Wednesday you might get him." - Matt Millen

John Matuszak was the first overall pick in the 1973 NFL Draft, but after a troubled nine-year career, the 6-foot-8, 285-pound defensive lineman achieved perhaps his greatest fame for his role in the 1985 movie “The Goonies” as Sloth, a hideous-looking but gentle-souled creature who was chained up in a basement. Known as “The Tooz,” Matuszak played collegiately at Missouri, but was expelled after punching someone’s lights out at a fraternity party. At the University of Tampa, during a pickup basketball game, he punched a student in the face, which required plastic surgery. Early in his NFL career, the Redskins cut Matuszak because he was known to drink vodka mixed with valium. In 1976, he found a home with the Raiders, where he continued drinking, partying, and breaking the law, including for keeping a gun and machete in his vehicle. But there was a private, generally under-reported side too. Matuszak, whose three siblings all died from Cystic Fibrosis (two of them as babies) – and who himself was bullied as a kid – as an adult did quiet charity work related to the disease. In 1989, four years later after starring in “The Goonies,” Matuszak overdosed on a prescription painkiller and died, at age 38.