A Beloved Member of the NFL Family Has Passed Away

Steve Wright, a lineman who was immortalized in a sculpture that became the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year trophy, has died at the age of 82.

The 6-foot-6, 250-pounder has rare size during the revolutionary period of football. Wright started as an offensive tackle at Alabama and won a national championship for Bear Bryant in 1961. He was drafted by both the Packers in the NFL and the Jets in the AFL in 1964. 

Wright chose to play for Vince Lombardi in Green Bay, where he won three championships, including the first two Super Bowls. He ended his career as a journeyman with four different cities in five years. Wright started in 43 of his 101 career games in nine NFL seasons.

But Wright is best known for serving as a model for sculptor Daniel Bennett Schwartz. The NFL wanted a distinctive trophy for a new award the league wanted to "bestow on a player who epitomized everything that’s right about the men who play pro football, both on and off the field. Wright stood in his uniform with a giant cape-like overcoat on his shoulder pads as Schwartz went to work creating a statue he called “The Gladiator” that the NFL adopted as its Man of the Year Trophy, according to NBC Sports. 

In 1977, the NFL Man of the Year trophy was given to the game's greatest running back, Walter Payton, who took on the namesake after he died in 1999. The Walter Payton Man of the Year has become one of the best titles in sports, exemplifying the best in humanitarian work in the community. 

Payton will forever be known as an HBCU legend. The Jackson State great known as 'Sweetness' was posthumously inducted into the inaugural class of the Black College Football Hall of Fame in 2010. 

After originally committing to Kansas State University, he decided to pursue his collegiate career at JSU where his older brother, Eddie, played football. But for Wright, he will always have a connection to some of the NFL’s all-time greats, like Payton, thanks to the award that features his likeness.