Marty Lyons leaving Jets' radio booth after 22 seasons calling games
Marty Lyons speaks as he is inducted into the New York Jets' Ring of Honor during a halftime ceremony on Oct. 13, 2013. Credit: AP
Marty Lyons is leaving the Jets’ radio booth after 22 seasons as an analyst and will be replaced by former Jets tight end Anthony Becht, the team announced on Thursday.
Becht will make his debut alongside play-by-play man Bob Wischusen for the Aug. 24 preseason game against the Giants.
Lyons’ 45-year association with the organization will continue, though. He will be an “ambassador” for the team, serving in a variety of roles that include engaging with fans and business partners as well as making media appearances on the team’s digital and broadcast programming.
Lyons, 67, played for the Jets from 1979-89 as a defensive lineman and is a member of the team’s Ring of Honor. He and Wischusen began together as the radio team for the 2002 season. The Jets this season will move from their longtime radio home on ESPN New York to Q104.3-FM.
“[I’m] definitely going to miss the booth, because there's been a 22-year relationship up there with Bob and [producer] Joe [Loughran] and all the guys,” Lyons told Newsday. “But I'm excited about this new opportunity.”
Lyons said he first spoke to Jets president Hymie Elhai two years ago about the ambassador role.
“I think the timing is right, not just for the organization, but also for myself,” Lyons said. “You know, 22 years up in the booth, 45 years being with the organization, and I'm very thankful to Hymie and [communications vice president] Eric [Gelfand] and [owner] Woody [Johnson] for giving me this opportunity.”
Becht, who turned 47 on Thursday, played in the NFL from 2000-2011, the first five of those seasons with the Jets, for whom he scored 17 touchdowns. The Jets drafted him 27th overall in 2000.
Since retiring, he has done TV analysis for college and pro games, primarily for ESPN, as well as radio work. Becht will continue to serve as head coach of the United Football League’s St. Louis Battlehawks, a job he has held the past two seasons.
“I’m excited,” Becht told Newsday after practice on Thursday. “There’s a lot of expectations with the season and the future of the organization. I’m just glad that I got a call and they thought that it would be an opportunity for me . . . I’m fired up to be a part of it.”
Becht said “media has been calling me for a long time,” and he views this as another extension of that. The schedule should allow him to watch his son, Rocco, play as a quarterback at Iowa State. (Quincy Enunwa will call the first two preseason games this summer with Wischusen.)
Becht praised Lyons for his work on Jets radio and elsewhere and called him a “mentor” for players and others in the organization.
Lyons said he recommended Becht for the Jets radio job.
“They allowed me to say, you know what, if I'm going to slide into another role, who do I think would be the person that would fit in?” Lyons said. “A sign of respect was, I suggested Anthony, and they said, well, we'll look into it.”
Lyons will continue his work with the Marty Lyons Foundation, which he founded in 1982 and which grants wishes to children with terminal or life-threatening illnesses, among Lyons’ other charitable endeavors.
“The way I'm going to look at this [Jets] position, I'm just very grateful to the organization to be in place with them for 45 years,” he said. “That's truly an honor, because the organization really doesn't owe me anything.
“I owe the organization, so they're giving me another opportunity to take on a different role, and I'm happy with it. I'm content with it, and I look forward to it.”
Lyons missed only four games on radio in his 22 seasons, when he suffered a stroke in 2017 and missed the preseason. He has remained a fan favorite, even among fans not old enough to have seen him play.
“I have a great deal of respect for the fans, what they've done for me personally, as a player, as a broadcaster, and also what they've done for the Foundation,” he said. “I'm one of those players that definitely appreciates everything that they've done for me.”
When Lyons was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 2013, Wischusen said, "Marty will never be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He's not going to see his bust some day in Canton. But some players mean more to their team and more to their community than the outside world will ever understand.
"If there was a Hall of Fame that combined athletic achievement with charity, benevolence, love, being a great father and a great friend, Marty Lyons would be a first-ballot inductee."
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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