Marty Lyons says Dwight Stephenson has forgiven him several times for the hit that ended the Hall of Famer’s career. Forgiving himself has been a different story.
“I live with it every day,” Lyons said on the Out to Pasture podcast. “I look back at my career and I wish I had that one play over.”
That play happened on a Monday night in December 1987. In the final minutes of a 37-28 Dolphins win against the New York Jets, Stephenson was hit by Lyons on a Jets fumble return. The hit, that was never quite captured by ABC cameras, caused a left knee injury that ended the Dolphins offensive lineman’s prolific career.
Lyons, who was Stephenson’s college teammate at Alabama, said the play “still haunts” him.
“I remember walking in the locker room, and everybody was looking at me, but I wanted to go in and apologize to Dwight. I loved Dwight, and played college ball with him, and had a great deal of respect for him. And when I was walking out, I ran into Coach [Don] Shula, and he kind of looked at me and says, ‘What are you doing in my locker room?’ And I tried to explain to him that I wanted to talk to Dwight, and he took me in the equipment room, and he never touched me, but I went up against the wall, and he was face to face with me, and called me everything in the book.
“The last thing that he said was, ‘You know what, you’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.’ It’s been almost, what, 40 years since ’87 and he was right.”
Stephenson still earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, despite the injury cutting his career short in his eighth NFL season.
