Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,136

This is the grave of Harvey Martin.

Born in 1950 in Dallas, Martin was not a football player when he was a kid. In 1967, he transferred for his junior year of high school to the city’s first integrated school. He overheard his father saying that his son was weak and abnormal. Supposedly, this was about how he didn’t play like other boys, but 17 is too old for that comment to stick, so I’m guessing here that there might have been some homophobic aspects to this or something like that. Well, he decided that year to prove his father wrong and signed up for the football team. He picked up the game very quickly. He played offensive tackle and didn’t start, but still see the field. Then he did win the starting job his senior year at defensive tackle.

But while this was a kid with talent, he was raw in both body and technique. Still, he did get one scholarship offer for college football–East Texas State, which is today East Texas A&M after a stint being Texas A&M-Commerce. Not sure that all this rebranding is going to do much for a college in a small, horrible east Texas town, but hey, what do I know. They placed him at defensive end. He didn’t do much his first two years, but really blossomed as a junior. He dominated as a senior and was one of the best defensive ends in the country at the small college level–and this was NAIA ball, so really really small college ball.

Still, Martin’s potential was obvious to everyone and the Dallas Cowboys–his hometown team–picked him in the 3rd round of the 1973 NFL Draft. Like in high school and college, it took him a couple of years to pick up the level of physical and mental domination the league required. It didn’t hurt him that he had a mentor in offensive tackle Rayfield Wright, who was ruthless but also didn’t destroy the kid in practice mentally even if he did physically; rather he brought him along. Martin became a starter in 1975 and by this time, he was known as Too Mean for his intense style of playing that made him an absolutely beast for opposing offensive linemen to handle. He became an absolute sack master. We don’t have a solid list of sacks before 1982, when the NFL began counting it as an official stat. But the Cowboys claim Martin had 114 sacks in his career, which is probably at least reasonably close to the truth (though teams may have more incentive to give certain players full sacks when official NFL statisticians would probably say it was half-sack and things like this). Either way, Martin was a great pass rusher.

In 1976, Martin had 15 1/2 sacks and made the Pro Bowl for the first time. The next year, he had a ridiculous 23 sacks, which remains the Cowboys team record. Now, Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns broke the all-time official single season record in 2025 with….23 sacks. So maybe in fact, he has just tied Martin. But again, there’s reason not to totally trust team stats on somewhat subjective decisions like who gets full credit for a sack. On the other hand, Martin did this in a 14 game season, not today’s 17 games. Moreover, Martin was Super Bowl MVP that year. The Cowboys defeated the Denver Broncos 27-10. Martin and his co-defensive lineman Randy White shared the MVP honors for the game. Martin and White had crushed Craig Morton as he threw and the ball was picked and then Martin had also forced a fumble. Martin was a huge star in Dallas. By the time of the Super Bowl, he had his own weekly radio show on a local station. He owned a couple of restaurants. He covered other sports on TV during the offseason. He was a large man and a large personality, two characteristics beloved by the most ridiculous fans in professional sports.

Unfortunately, Martin was also a hard-partying guy and this was the 70s and being a Dallas Cowboy and doing a lot of partying went very well together, as it would well into the 1990s. By 1978, this began to affect his production, though his body might not have been quite as perfect either due to wear and tear. He still had 16 sacks in 1978, but this fell to 10 in 1979, remained around there for a few years, and then plunged to only 2 in 1983.

By the early 80s, Martin was doing a metric ton of cocaine. In fact, he retired after the 83 season when the Cowboys asked him to take a drug test. He refused. It would take him a long time to get his life in order. He plunged down pretty far after that. He did a little announcing, he did a little pro wrestling. But it got grim. Finally, in 1996, he was arrested for cocaine possession and domestic violence. He had gone bankrupt at least once by this time as well. He sought help as he received probation for the charges. He seems to have straightened things up after that. He got a regular job as a salesman. And since once a Cowboys legend, always a Cowboys legend, he used his story to do a lot of talks to both kids and other athletes about the horrors of addiction and how that could intersect with fame to get pretty nasty.

Unfortunately, Martin also developed pancreatic cancer and he died of that in 2001. He was 51 years old. He was the first Super Bowl MVP to die.

Harvey Martin is buried in Restland Memorial Park, Dallas, Texas.

Martin was named to the NFL’s Second Team All Decade Team for the 70s. Somewhat surprisingly, he is not in the Hall of Fame given that every first teamer is in there and all but four of the second teamers. But he’s never even been a finalist. In any case, if you would like this series to visit other members of the NFL All 70s Team, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Dick Butkus is in Culver City, California (now that’s someone to profile!) and Walter Payton is in Columbia, Mississippi. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.