'A Football Life' portrays Lyle Alzado as far more than steroid abuser

Lyle Alzado has an ironclad NFL legacy, though probably not one he would have envisioned during his playing days.

The late all-pro defensive end, whose 15-year career was split among the Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Raiders between 1971 through 1985, is best known as the poster boy for steroid abuse in the league. Prior to his death in 1992, he blamed his usage of the drugs and hormone growth hormone to his terminal brain cancer.

His teammates remembered him as a physically imposing and ferocious player.

"He would build up into that rage. And then you would see it come out, and it came out in the form of hits for losses, and it came out in the form of tackles, and it came out in the form of sacks," former Broncos linebacker Tom Jackson says in NFL Films' Lyle Alzado: A Football Life.

"I know I spent time trying to imagine how much of Lyle was Lyle and how much of Lyle was steroids."

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However the documentary of Alzado's life, which premieres Friday at 9 p.m. ET on NFL Network, paints a much more complex picture of this man than that of a volcanic pass rusher — he was known as Darth Raider and Three Mile Lyle — who was never the embodiment of sportsmanship on the field.

Stock footage of Alzado and interviews with his family, friends, ex-teammates and former wives, reveal a picture of a tortured soul who led a life-long but unsuccessful quest for happiness. His family members suggest he never overcame a childhood irreparably damaged by his abusive father.

That doesn't mean he didn't try.

"Take all the things of Lyle Alzado, and throw them out the window because here's the one thing that he always was — no matter what — it was the most consistent thing in his life: Lyle had a good heart," says former Raiders teammate Matt Millen. "He wanted to do good with kids and people who couldn't help themselves. He'd be their champion."

Alzado successfully raised millions for children's causes and was a frequent visitor to hospital-bound kids.

Married four times, two of Alzado's wives were interviewed for A Football Life, and both remember him fondly despite constant infidelity. Alzado's sister, Janice, says he was "emotionally unstable in that arena" as a husband, citing his emotional scars.

Alzado's brother, Peter, says Alzado would ask him, "What do you say about a guy who wants to do good but can't?"

Yet everyone seems to agree Alzado did plenty of good given his decision to reveal the steroid use and offer himself as a cautionary tale that was famously documented in a Sports Illustrated cover story.

And Jackson points out a contextual reminder about steroids, which the NFL didn't test for until 1987, two years after Alzado's final game.

"It wasn't against the rules. A lot of guys did it. I never sensed there was a moral stigma about it," says Jackson. "We did know that it made you better."

Alzado's first wife, Sharon, opined that he believed the drugs were nothing more than muscle builders that fueled his "health nut" lifestyle. She says she never knew him to smoke or drink but suspects his addictive personality fed his spiral with the steroids.

"He made a deal with the devil, and it was time for the devil to collect," says Marc Lyons, Alzado's lifelong best friend.

Whatever the faults of a man who battled constant inner turmoil that spilled onto the field, where he openly reveled in the NFL's intrinsic violence, A Football Life ensures there is more to the imprint Alzado left behind with narrator Josh Charles saying: "Lyle Alzado had always relished playing the villain. But in the final act of his football life, Darth Raider chose to do something heroic."

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