If there were a Mount Rushmore of draft busts, Tony Mandarich’s heavy face and mullet would be carved in it. A behemoth offensive line prospect out of Michigan State University, who was lavishly praised by virtually every prognosticator, Mandarich was a spectacular flop after being drafted second overall by the Packers in the 1989 Draft.
“THE INCREDIBLE BULK” (1989)
Perhaps the defining image of the phenomenon that was Tony Mandarich was the Sports Illustrated cover, issued a few weeks before the draft, which featured an image of the lineman and included the headline THE INCREDIBLE BULK, along with the subhead “Best Offensive Line Prospect Ever.” The now-infamous cover portrayed a towering 6-foot-6, 315-pound Mandarich with his shirt off standing on a mountaintop in front of beautiful sunset.
Throughout the rich history of the NFL, many prospects have been universally forecasted to be great NFL players. However, very few, if any, were viewed more favorably than Mandarich. Experts and commentators around the country confidently described him as a sure thing, a prospect guaranteed to be a perennial All-Pro and possibly an NFL immortal. Most of the tales about the Mandarich hype don’t even do it justice. To this day, his story of great expectations versus dismal reality is basically unparalleled.
Virtually anyone who scouted, evaluated, or even mentioned Mandarich before the 1989 Draft utilized the maximum amount of hyperbole to describe him. He didn’t give up a single sack and recorded 50 pancake blocks during his senior season in college. His film was off the charts. In 2009, former Rutgers defensive lineman Kory Kozak described watching Mandarich’s game tape in 1988 while preparing to play Michigan State in the first game of the season:
Watching the Rose Bowl [against USC on January 1, 1988], we saw Mandarich pancaking [future first-round defensive lineman] Tim Ryan from USC on one play, driving him out of film frame the next… It wasn’t only Ryan. We saw an All-America defensive end pinned to the ground by Mandarich, a linebacker from Wisconsin on skates 10 yards downfield, a defensive tackle from Ohio State curled up in the fetal position. The worst was the Iowa team captain who went for the trifecta: on skates for 10 yards, pinned to the ground, and then curled up in the fetal position… [Mandarich] drove a Northwestern player into the end zone, pancaked him, and then told the player to “stay there.”
“THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLAYER. WE’LL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER”
In the weeks and months leading up to the draft, the praise for Mandarich’s size and ability poured in. “He’s faster than any offensive lineman in pro football,” Michigan State head coach George Perles said. “There’s probably nobody faster in the world at his weight. This is a different player. We’ll never have another.” Joe Wooley, the director of player personnel for the Eagles, said, “If you want to put a 9.0 on him (the highest grade in the National Football Scouting system at the time), you can go ahead and do it… He’s a man among children.” The Browns did give him such a grade. It was their first 9.0 since O. J. Simpson.
There were enough glowing evaluations of Mandarich to fill a book all by themselves. Among them:
“A once-in-a-lifetime impact starter.”
—Ourlads’ Guide to the NFL Draft
“A freak of nature.”
—Cleveland Browns scout Mike Lombardi
“The best offensive lineman I have ever graded in my years of researching the draft.”
—Mel Kiper Jr.
“Mandarich is out of this world.”
—Veteran draft analyst Joel Buchsbaum
“A surer thing than most quarterbacks he will ever have to protect.”
—Don Pierson, writer, Chicago Tribune
“An instant starter and probable Pro Bowl performer right out of the blocks. All the Packers have to hope is that he doesn’t hurt too many of their defensive players before the preseason opener.”
—Larry Dorman, writer, Miami Herald
“I’ve been in football 29 years and I’ve never seen a more outstanding offensive lineman.”
—Former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Dick Vermeil
“Could be the best tackle ever.”
—Brian White, writer, (Southwest Florida) News-Press
“He’s the best I’ve seen in a long, long time.”
—Mike Allman, Seattle Seahawks director of player personnel
“He’s the finest pure offensive tackle I’ve ever seen come out of the draft.”
—Steve Ortmayer, director of player development for the San Diego Chargers
“Mandarich is in a class by himself… It doesn’t get any better than this behemoth.”
—Vinny DiTrani, writer, (North Jersey) Record
A contributing factor to Mandarich’s mythological pre-draft portrayals was his otherworldly February Pro-Day performance at Michigan State. The workout astonished the NFL scouts in attendance. “Someday, we’ll be able to tell people we were here when this happened,” said Dallas Cowboys offensive line coach Jim Erkanbeck. Mandarich weighed in at 304 pounds and ran a 4.65 forty-yard dash, an unfathomable time for a lineman of his size. He also bench-pressed 225 pounds a staggering 39 times. It was described by Dolphins director of player personnel Chuck Connor as “a running back’s workout in a 6-foot-5, 303-pound body.”
The pro-day workout, along with the video clips of Mandarich destroying defensive linemen in the Big Ten, added to the folkloric conception of Mandarich that had been forming for months. Two months later, when the Sports Illustrated cover hit the stands, Tony Mandarich became more than just a prospect. He was a phenomenon.
The Green Bay Packers held the No. 2 pick in the draft behind the Dallas Cowboys, and were in line to take Mandarich. Dallas, desperate for a quarterback, was slotted to pick UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman. According to the Giants’ director of player personnel, Tom Boisture, the Packers were lucky. “[Packers General Manager] Tom [Braatz] should spend all his time in church praying that Dallas takes Aikman…” Boisture said. “You can get quarterbacks. You can’t get Mandariches. He’s like what O. J. was for a running back. Pound-for-pound he’s the best athlete I’ve seen. And there’s a lot of pounds there, baby.”
“OUR TRAINER TALKED TO THEIR TRAINER, OUR DOCTOR TALKED TO THEIR DOCTOR…”
The Sports Illustrated cover may have made Mandarich look like the second coming of the Hulk, but the lengthy piece inside the edition, written by Rick Telander, wasn’t nearly as kind. Telander had flown to Los Angeles, where Mandarich was training before the draft, to follow him around for a few days for the story. It portrayed Mandarich as a Guns N’ Roses blasting, bandanna-wearing, weight-lifting Neanderthal who chugged caffeine. While he didn’t directly come out and say it, the tone of Telander’s article implied that perhaps Mandarich’s physique wasn’t sculpted entirely by legal means.
Telander was familiar with the college football steroid culture. Less than a year earlier, in October 1988, he collaborated with University of South Carolina defensive lineman Tommy Chaikin to publish a first-person account in Sports Illustrated of Chaikin’s steroid abuse and the physical and mental toll it had taken on him. Chaikin also alleged that there was widespread steroid use among the players in the South Carolina program that was tacitly approved by the coaching staff. It turned into a major scandal. A subsequent internal investigation determined that several coaches had been involved in the distribution of steroids to athletes at the University. Three South Carolina coaches ended up pleading guilty in federal court on misdemeanor charges involving distributing steroids to the players.
Many others were suspicious of Mandarich. When he arrived at Michigan State his freshman year, Mandarich weighed 255 pounds. By the time he left a few years later, he was up to 315 pounds and looked like he could bench-press a large building. Mandarich did not take kindly to steroid speculation. He became increasingly annoyed with questions about his body. When prompted, he would cite the drug tests he passed when he played for Michigan State and the one he took before the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis during the months leading up to the 1989 Draft. He attributed his dynamic body to his weight-lifting regimen and a seven-meal-a-day, 15,000-calorie diet. Packers general manager Tom Braatz wasn’t concerned. “Our trainer talked to their trainer, our doctor talked to their doctor and I talked to George Perles… Our information is good that for the last two years he has not been on it,” he said.
And that was that. When the draft came around in late April, the Packers wasted no time in selecting Mandarich at No. 2. Aikman and the three players selected directly after Mandarich—Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas, and Deion Sanders—are all now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“THE INCREDIBLE BUST” (1992)
Mandarich’s tenure in Green Bay was a disaster from the outset. He spent the entire summer after the draft in a very public contract dispute. Five days before the Packers’ regular-season opener, he signed a four-year, $4.43 million contract. At the time, it was the biggest contract signed by an offensive lineman in NFL history.
When Mandarich finally reported to camp, he was down from his 315-pound, pre-draft weight to under 300 pounds. His rookie season was a disappointment. He rarely played, and there were significant questions about his body. Rumors were rampant that his drastic weight loss was a result of the fact that he was no longer using steroids.
The speculation heated up even more in March 1990 when a Detroit News report alleged, among other things, that numerous players on the 1987 Michigan State team, with Mandarich front and center, injected each other with steroids the entire season, which they openly discussed together in the locker room and at the training table. It also alleged that up to 15 players used pre-brought, clean urine to pass NCAA drug tests. MSU officials denied knowledge of any of this.
During the 1990 season, his second year in the league, Mandarich started all 16 games for the Packers at right tackle. His performance was less than stellar. During a 31–0 mid-December blowout by the Eagles in Philadelphia, Mandarich was thoroughly embarrassed by eventual Hall of Fame defensive end Reggie White. In 1991, Mandarich started 15 games and wasn’t much better. In 1992, he missed the entire season, landing on the non-football injury and illness list with hyperthyroidism.
By the end of September 1992, Tony found himself on the cover of Sports Illustrated again. This time, however, the package was much less flattering. Above a picture of a dejected Mandarich on one knee in his Packers uniform ran the headline THE INCREDIBLE BUST. The accompanying article read like a postmortem on his dwindling career.
Mandarich’s four-year contract expired at the end of the 1992 season and the Packers did not renew it. He didn’t play again for four years. Instead, he moved back to Michigan, during which time he was fully addicted to drugs and alcohol. After spending time in rehab, he got sober and was given a second chance with the Indianapolis Colts, who were coached by his former Packers’ head coach Lindy Infante. He started all 16 games for the Colts in 1997 and was a serviceable lineman. After suffering a shoulder injury during the 1998 season, Mandarich hung up his cleats for good.
“I WAS TAKING WINSTROL B, FINIJEC, EQUIPOIS, ANADROL 50S, ANAVAR, TESTOSTERONE…” (2008)
In October 2008, after many years of vehement denials, Mandarich appeared on Showtime’s Inside the NFL and came clean, admitting to using steroids throughout his career at Michigan State. He also wrote a tell-all book, further elaborating on his experiences. Six months later, in an interview that appeared in an “Outside the Lines” piece on ESPN’s SportsCenter, he described some of the steroids he used regularly during college:
I was taking Winstrol B, Finijec, Equipois, Anadrol 50s, Anavar, Testosterone, Dynobol.… At times, I would take half an Anadrol 50, and the results that I got from that drug was tremendous. I could take that for three days and be 10–15 percent stronger than I was three days prior.
According to Mandarich, once he was drafted, he stopped using steroids because the NFL’s new testing program was significantly harder to beat than the NCAA’s. The effect was drastic. He lost 20 pounds, and his edge along with it. However, he doesn’t believe that quitting steroids was the most debilitating factor in sinking his NFL career. After coming clean in 2008, Mandarich also revealed that, during his entire Packers career, he was a habitual drinker and addicted to painkillers. He claimed he was not sober for a single day during the four years he was with Green Bay. The effect on his play was substantial. “Playing half in the bag, being on painkillers in the middle of games, is brutal,” he said in a 2015 interview. “You think it’s helping you, but you become lethargic, slow and non-aggressive because alcohol’s a downer, as are painkillers.”
After the Showtime interview aired, Telander revealed in an article in the Chicago Sun-Times that, during the days he was with Mandarich for his 1989 Sports Illustrated piece, he repeatedly asked Mandarich if he was using, to which Mandarich said, “Never.” A couple of months later, Mandarich apologized for the 1989 interview. “I was wrong. I conned you… I was a jackass,” Mandarich told him.
“THE WORST-KEPT SECRET AT [MICHIGAN STATE]”
As soon as Mandarich made his admission, other writers immediately professed to believing that Mandarich had been using during his college career. Jack Ebling, who covered Michigan State during the Mandarich years for the Lansing State Journal, called the lineman’s steroid use “the worst-kept secret at MSU.” It was a phrase that Mandarich told the Detroit News in 2008 he “had to laugh at because it’s true.” According to (Appleton, Wisconsin) Post-Crescent writer Tim Froberg, “Back then just about everyone in the Wisconsin media guessed that a balding, acne-orine Mandarich was, or had been, on the juice…”
In a blog post, titled “Tony Mandarich fails to stun the world with head-slappingly obvious admission of steroid abuse at Michigan State,” Matt Hinton of Yahoo Sports! didn’t hide his sarcasm. “Collegiate steroid abuse in the late eighties? Who could have possibly imagined?” “Boy, there’s a real shocker,” a Philadelphia Daily News blurb asked ironically. “What next? An admission from a former altar boy that he snuck in a few sips of wine.” Kenosha News writer Mike Larsen simply wrote, “Ya think,” in response to Mandarich’s confession.
Despite his massive steroid abuse, Mandarich somehow made it through college and the draft process in a blaze of glory. When he was at Michigan State, steroids were a banned substance. However, the NCAA never tested for them until his second year there. Even then, it only tested players playing in late December or January bowl games. So as soon as the Michigan State players learned they were going to play in a bowl game, steroid users, including Mandarich, would stay clean for a certain period before the test to ensure the steroids were out of their system. They didn’t even have to cheat on the test.
The NCAA did throw one curveball that almost exposed Mandarich well before 2008. In December 1987, two days before the Michigan State football team flew to Pasadena, California for its Rose Bowl game against USC, the NCAA announced there would be a surprise drug test administered to the MSU players upon their arrival. Also, unlike previous tests, the testing folks planned to watch each player urinate in the cup. This was a huge problem for Mandarich and any steroid-using teammates, as they had begun using again immediately after passing the test they took in East Lansing weeks earlier.
As a result, they had no time to flush out their systems and had to cheat on the test. During his 2009 ESPN “Outside the Lines” feature, Mandarich explained the innovative maneuver his teammates and he used to test negative:
I basically had strapped something to my back, a little… doggy toy, and took the squeakers out of it, hooked up a little hose to it, and left the top of it with a hole so it had air. Put in clean urine, ran a tube, you know, underneath, and um, put a piece of bubbalicious gum to cap it.
Mandarich also admitted to using a similar method to cheat on the drug test given just prior to his final college game, the Gator Bowl, against Georgia on New Year’s Day in 1989.
So, even though he was a habitual steroid abuser of the highest order, Mandarich passed all five drug tests he was given. (He passed the fifth test, given by the NFL at the combine, because at that point, he had stopped juicing.)
In 2008, Mandarich said he never told the Michigan State coaches that he was using steroids, and he does not believe they knew. But given his later admissions about how rampant and out in the open it was in the program, it is clear the coaching staff didn’t investigate very rigorously.
“WITHIN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS IN THE LEAGUE, I WANT TO BE THE BEST LINEMAN EVER TO PLAY IN THE NFL”
Mandarich played the part of a cocky, overpowering, generational offensive lineman. He was like a more outspoken version of villain Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. “I’m big, I’m strong, I’m smart, and I like knocking people on their [butts],” he said before the draft. After the draft, he told reporters that “Within the first five years in the league, I want to be the best lineman ever to play in the NFL.” Before his final college game, the Gator Bowl, Georgia defensive end Wycliffe Lovelace had called him overrated. “I called [Lovelace] ‘Linda,’” Mandarich told Sports Illustrated. “I ripped his helmet off twice in the game. I abused him. I punished him.”
When Mandarich confessed, few were surprised. But if so many people in the college football world had suspicions at the time, why did so few voice their concerns? For one thing, and most importantly, those who were suspicious had no verifiable evidence that he was using. Without that, making a serious accusation that a player is cheating would not go very far. “I knew he was on juice,” Telander wrote in Sports Illustrated in 2008. “There was nothing I could do… I hinted in my story, but I could not say what I was sure of.”
Some may also wonder why Sports Illustrated was aggressively covering a player like Mandarich and helping raise the profile of a someone who was suspected by many to be a big fraud. In 2020, Telander explained:
You write what you write… You write about people that are at the top of their game… We knew at Sports Illustrated that Tony Mandarich was going to be drafted very high; [his] statistics in college were off the charts. He was playing, he had been allowed to play. He hadn’t been found guilty of anything, and in America you’re innocent until found guilty, and to not write about this guy would have been to miss the highest offensive lineman draft pick in I don’t know how long.
The NCAA played a key role (unintentionally) in providing a cover for Michigan State, the Packers, and anybody else who wanted to keep their eyes and ears at a distance. Until the NCAA began random testing in 1990, the number of student-athletes who tested positive for steroids never exceeded 1 percent. NCAA Executive Director Richard Schultz said that the low percentage was not because so few people were using the banned substances, but because the tests were so easy to beat. “Unfortunately, I think we only catch the dumb users.”
When Mandarich came clean, numerous journalists started writing articles expressing their disappointment in Mandarich’s lying. One suggested that Braatz and some others write a formal apology, since “They’re the ones who couldn’t see through Mandarich’s snow job.” But these critics may have been underestimating Braatz’s intelligence. Did Braatz really fail to see through Mandarich? Was he that naïve? It could be that the Packers’ front office didn’t “fail to see” anything.
They might have just chosen not to look.
Braatz always claimed he never discovered any explicit evidence of Mandarich’s steroid use. That’s probably true. But given the way the team investigated the issue, it is easy to see why nothing turned up. The Packers’ vetting process into Mandarich’s strength-training practices was hardly thorough. According to Braatz in 1989, his due diligence into the issue consisted of the Packers’ doctors and him having various discussions with Michigan State’s trainers, doctors, and Michigan State football head coach George Perles and his staff. Not exactly objective parties.
The Packers likely didn’t jump through hoops to find out the truth about Mandarich’s muscle-building methods because, frankly, they didn’t really care. Braatz essentially admitted as much. In comments to the media during the weeks leading up to the draft, he made it pretty clear that the Packers’ front office believed Mandarich, without the assistance of steroids, would be just as effective as Mandarich using steroids, as long as he maintained a competitive offensive lineman weight. Braatz said, “The point is moot in this case… [Mandarich] is a 305-pound man. If he was on them and had to get off, he wouldn’t go down to 240. He’d be 280, 285, and be big enough. The risk comes in the case of somebody that’s 250 and might go to 210.” This rationale was shared by a few others around the league. Bob McGinn, who covered the Packers for almost 40 years, wrote in 2019 in The Athletic that pro people thought that Mandarich’s destructive power would carry him over to the NFL, regardless of whether or not he was on steroids. According to McGinn, shortly before the 1989 Draft, a personnel director for an AFC team said that “[Even] if he comes down to 280 or 290 pounds when he gets off the ’roids, he’s still going to be outstanding.”
The weight loss and loss of strength from being clean had a major effect on Mandarich’s game. The Packers also didn’t expect that he would come in with serious drug addiction issues that would further compromise his potential. Nevertheless, the message from the Packers seemed clear: Whether or not Mandarich was a steroid user at Michigan State was not the Packers’ problem. And with the assurances from the Michigan State coaching staff, along with the drug tests he passed during his college career, Green Bay had all the plausible deniability it needed to select Mandarich No. 2 overall with a clear conscience.
BLINDED BY THE MYTH
When Washington general manager Bobby Beathard was raving about Mandarich before the 1989 Draft, he proclaimed that he was “so good it’s almost like he’s not real.” Turns out, he wasn’t. But like so many draft busts before and after him, the team who selected him was the one left holding the bag. Braatz, who was fired by the Packers a few years later, admitted that he bought into the mythological figure. “The hype was bigger than what he really was,” he said. “There isn’t anybody that good.”