Abdul Salaam, who ultimately was the first arrival among the founding members of the greatest quartet of players in Jets history — the New York Sack Exchange — has died. He was 71.
Salaam, whose name means "soldier of peace," became a Jet when he was known as Larry Faulk, a defensive end out of Kent State selected by the team in the seventh round of the '76 draft before converting to Islam the next year. He often displayed a taciturn, stern visage in the locker room, which simultaneously suggested a fierce fighter on the field but also earned him the nickname of the Jets' "quiet philosopher."
"You don't get anything without a struggle," Salaam said in 1980. "But I love struggle. Every day it's a struggle for me to do my job, and I'm sure it's a struggle for you to do yours. But if you don't struggle, you won't be able to get up in the morning."
"You never hear much from Abdul," head coach Walt Michaels said back then, "but out on the field, he gets the job done."
"I always thought of him like that John Wayne character, 'The Quiet Man,' " longtime public relations director Frank Ramos said today. "And he just didn't miss a tackle. When he got his hands on you, that was it, it was over. And he never wanted any publicity. He just never said a word, went to work like a lunchpail guy and did his job."
Salaam's battles dating to his Cincinnati childhood raised him up along with his fellow Sack Exchange members into something glorious for the Green & White and their fans to behold. Joe Klecko was drafted in 1978, Mark Gastineau and Marty Lyons in '79. Salaam moved to tackle and he and his three teammates for a too short but highly productive stretch were the stuff of NFL legend and opposing offenses' nightmares.
The front four's greatest achievement was the 1981 season, when they led the ferocious pass rush to a franchise-record 66 sacks. The team sacks are official but the individual sacks — Klecko's 20.5, Gastineau's 20, Salaam's 7 and Lyons' 6.5 — all came in the season before player sacks became official. But no matter. They all felt very real to the QBs who were taken down, among them Lynn Dickey, Phil Simms and Ken Stabler, all sacked at least seven times in a game.
Salaam recalled working closely not only with Lyons to his right but Gastineau on the left edge of the line when he spoke with newyorkjets.com's Jim Gehman in 2021.
"When Mark did the sack dance, I knew he was sincerely happy about getting the sack, so it was kind of a dance for me, too," Salaam said. "But I was in the middle and wasn't able to get as many, so I wasn't able to dance as good."
"He was a soldier," Gastineau said today. "He let me go and run up and run in and run out and let me do my own thing. And that made me be me."
"Abdul was bigger than life. He enjoyed life," Lyons also recalled. "When he got up to speak, he wasn't a rah-rah guy all the time, but when he spoke, you listened. And when we went on the field, I was right next to him and right next to Joe, squeezed in the middle, and we all knew what we had to do. Abdul and I communicated well.
"His name says it all: soldier of peace. That's what he did. If there were any conflicts with the four of us, he was always that mediator who came in and resolved the problems," Lyons said, adding, "I just got off the phone with Mark and Joe. I think we're all hurting today. We didn't just lose a teammate, we lost a friend."
WR Wesley Walker, who came to the Jets a year after Salaam, was also hit hard by the loss of his old teammate, saying in a Facebook post:
YOU WILL BE MISSED MY BROTHER!!! FOREVER EMBEDDED IN OUR HEARTS, NEVER FORGOTTEN
Salaam's role in the Jets' version of the Fab Four will continue to resonate with fans young and old. The Jets' rebranding this season brought the past forward to the present in the redesigning of the team's logo and uniforms from that era. And ESPN announced in August that it has greenlit "The Sack Exchange" for its "30 for 30" documentary series.
"We were fortunate to get together for that show," Lyons said of some of the video shot at One Jets Drive. "Abdul was in a wheelchair, but his sense of humor, his laugh, everything was still there."
After his eighth Jets season in 1983, all spent wearing No. 74, Salaam retired as a player. A Cincinnatian at heart, he and his wife, Debbie, lived there after his playing days and when he became an officer and a football coach in the city's school district. After retiring from his post-fooball pursuits, he enjoyed spending time with his family and watching his granddaughters play basketball.
And Salaam still fondly remembered the struggles of the serious game that he and his band of brothers performed at the highest level. Asked what he was most proud of from his Sack Exchange days, he said:
"That we survived. It was a game of survival. And we passed the test."
