Before the sack even officially existed in the NFL, the “New York Sack Exchange” was racking up opposing quarterbacks in bull market numbers.
Yet the mystique of those 1980s New York Jets teams was a microcosm of the long-wayward franchise, their success fleeting and often coming at great cost and even in spite of the often-feuding protagonists.
Regardless, NFL Films and ESPN have shone their spotlight on the famous (and infamous) four-man defensive line of those Jets squads in the newest installment of the Emmy Award-winning “30 for 30” series, which premieres Friday night at 8 p.m. ET. And unlike the mythologizing associated with many of NFL Films’ projects, this is an unvarnished look at a talented but dysfunctional quartet sharing its story in its own words, on its own terms.
“Generally speaking, it is a deviation from our PR-friendly past, shall we say,” co-director James Weiner told USA TODAY Sports, which was also given an early screening of the film.
“We were able to get into the rawness of their relationship, and their hostility and their animosity. I think what allowed us to do that was really their age. I think you reach a certain point where you don’t care anymore how people (perceive you).
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“The fact that this story marinated for 40 years, I think that’s what allowed us to do this.”
It was also a personal passion project for Weiner, a lifelong Jets fan and New York City native who’d crusaded at NFL Films for a quarter-century to feature faded Jets stars Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam before finally getting it Gang-Greenlit.
“I would argue that the ‘Sack Exchange’ is still the biggest thing to happen to the Jets since Joe Namath,” added Weiner, who was born after the Hall of Fame quarterback’s prime years in the 1960s.
Despite its flawed dynamics, the “Sack Exchange” burst onto the scene in 1981 with monster returns, fueling the Jets’ first winning season and playoff appearance since Namath guided the legendary ’68 team to the franchise’s only Super Bowl appearance. Gastineau and Klecko remain the only teammates in league history to have at least 20 sacks in the same season – though, in true Jets fashion, that’s an unofficial record given sacks weren’t officially recorded by the NFL until, yep, 1982.
The Jets’ 66 total sacks in ’81 – their front four accounting for 54 – were also an unofficial mark. However their bull market gave way to a Bears market in 1984, when Chicago officially claimed the league sack record it still owns with 72.
Yet, like the core players who became the iconic nucleus of the ’85 Bears, the “Sack Exchange” was imbued with ample ability. And personality.
The sleek Gastineau was an explosive athlete – easily identifiable thanks to his mustache, a mane of dark hair that couldn’t be contained by his helmet and those signature (and controversial) sack dances. Screaming off the left side, he was something of a forerunner of the modern edge rusher. (He was also something of a forerunner to Travis Kelce as a crossover celebrity, Gastineau’s profile raised when he began dating Hollywood superstar Brigitte Nielsen in 1988.)
Klecko was a menace on the other side, intimidating and strong as a bull – there’s even footage of him (successfully) wrestling a bear. He received All-Pro recognition at defensive end, tackle and nose tackle during a sterling 12-year career.
Lyons was the group’s lone first-round draft pick, joining the Jets in 1979 after a star-studded run playing for Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant at Alabama. He says his career took off after he switched positions with Klecko, moving to defensive tackle in 1980. Salaam, ever unsung but dependable, was the left DT … a figurative and literal buffer between Gastineau and the Klecko-Lyons couplet on the right side.
Method Man, a Hempstead, New York, native who narrates the doc, said: “Who were these four guys? It was like watching a superhero team being formed.”
Before it came apart at the seams.
This was no band of brothers. The insecure Gastineau says he was afraid of Klecko, the team’s leader, who himself was aggravated by the other’s flamboyance and often selfish and aloof behavior. Lyons was and is close with Klecko but also frequently clashed with Gastineau. The quiet but steadier Salaam attempted to hold them all together.
“If you’re a Jet fan, it’s a must-watch,” Lyons told USA TODAY Sports.
“You’ll learn a lot by watching it. And you’ll also learn you can work together if you respect one another and you have that same common goal – and the common goal we had was we wanted to win, and we wanted to get to the quarterback, and we wanted to do something special. And we were able to accomplish that.
“Nobody can take it away from us. ’30 for 30’ brought it back to life.”
The film follows the stratospheric rise and fall of the ‘Sack Exchange,’ which carried the Jets to the AFC championship game during the strike-shortened 1982 season. But they wouldn’t reach the Super Bowl then. Or ever. A heartbreaking double-overtime loss to the Cleveland Browns in the 1986 divisional playoff round – Gastineau’s personal foul on Bernie Kosar late in regulation helped the Browns send the game into sudden death – was effectively the unit’s last hurrah.
“The sad part about the whole thing is, for so many years we were teammates, but we really didn’t get to know one another. We didn’t socialize off the field, we didn’t socialize during the week,” said Lyons, sharing that Gastineau did much of his training at a gym away from the Jets’ Long Island facility at the time.
“We never had the opportunity to know who Mark Gastineau was, and I don’t think that Mark really has a clue on who I am, or who Joe Klecko is.
“That’s sad.”
As is the plight of Salaam, formerly Larry Faulk, his name translated to “Soldier of Peace.” He recently died at the age of 71 after years of declining health. The least-known player from the “Sack Exchange,” Salaam, Gastineau’s best friend on the team, is credited with binding the group until he was traded following the 1983 season.
“(Salaam) was the peacemaker in 1981, and he was the peacemaker in 2024,” said Weiner, admitting it still wasn’t easy to get the four men together for a sitdown at the New York Stock Exchange, site of some memorable marketing for the “Sack Exchange” four decades earlier, prior to Salaam’s death in October.
“He was in the middle of everything, and I do think when Abdul Salaam got traded and left the team, that was the beginning of the downfall of the ‘Sack Exchange.’ He is a key figure for sure in this story.”
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It’s also a story with tangents, notably some extremely troubling personal demons shared by Gastineau. His recently revealed confrontation with Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, whom Gastineau blames for giving his single-season sack record (22 set in 1984, when teams played 16 games) to Michael Strahan in 2001, underscores his inability to shed the past and an obsession with personal glory that often made him a pariah in his own locker room.
IS MARK GASTINEAU A HALL OF FAMER? Marty Lyons says he isn’t sure
“We did not like each other, and we’ve both said that,” said Klecko, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023 after a 35-year wait, his enshrinement an event that brought the group together and shed fresh attention on it while breathing new life into the “30 for 30” project.
“But I’ve said in the past, too – it made us both (he and Gastineau) better.”
Yet this is also a story about love and redemption and, perhaps, letting bygones be bygones for men who rarely hung out collectively as teammates nor in the decades since they retired.
“The shoot at the Stock Exchange, to me, became a group therapy session,” co-director Ken Rodgers told USA TODAY Sports. “It might not have solved the problems, but it put them on the table and allowed them to just admit, ‘Hey, there’s some good and bad in our history, and we are who we are now.’ I don’t think anyone’s going to watch this film and think anything other than, ‘Wow, that’s the truth behind the relationships.’ Relationships are messy, they are complicated.
“I just feel like this film was honest. And credit to those guys for not trying to present a different story (or) a sanitized story. … They’re at the age now where, hey you’ve got to address this and let it go, or it’s gonna eat you up.
“To sugarcoat it wouldn’t be a realistic portrayal of what it’s like to be a Jets fan and to love these guys. The realistic portrayal is, this is just another chapter of frustrating history, but yet we still can’t help loving it.”
A story from the 1980s appropriately ends with Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” as the outro. It seems the remaining members of the “Sack Exchange,” hit hard by Salaam’s passing, have finally found something of a lasting peace.
“Every Sunday we would line up together, and we would go out there and compete as a unit,” said Lyons, 67, who is grateful the film illuminates his past glory and regrets for his children, who are now in their thirties and forties yet were too young to enjoy his heyday.
“I would hope that everybody’s able to move on. It’s been a long time to carry any type of resentment, animosity, jealousy – it eats you up from the inside out.”
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Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter, @ByNateDavis.
