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Arbanas says he thought that Upshaw and other members of the players union knew him well enough to know he wasn't trying to cheat the league out of money for his injuries.

"To have guys from your own era ... turn you down, I don't think it's fair." With a first down in sight, Chiefs quarterback Trent Green scrambled. He cleared the necessary 5 yards before a pair of Cincinnati Bengals defenders zeroed in on him. Green spotted them and began a feet-first slide to avoid a bone-rattling hit. But as Green slid across the grass, Bengals defensive end Robert Geathers lowered his shoulder into Green's chest. Green's head whipped back as if he were a test dummy in a car crash, snapping violently against the turf.

Green didn't move for the next 11 minutes. A silent crowd stared at his limp body sprawled on the ground.

EMTs immobilized Green and rolled him off the field on a stretcher. He would be diagnosed with a concussion. After this first game of the 2006 season, he wouldn't play again until week 13. Against the Cleveland Browns, though, he wasn't the same. The Chiefs went on to lose four of six with Green as the starter. The team sneaked into the playoffs, only to be dominated by Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, who eventually won the Super Bowl.

The sight of Green crumpled on the field like roadkill was familiar to Chiefs fans. It was the second consecutive year that a prominent Chief was knocked out of the game, not to return for weeks. Trailing the San Diego Chargers 21-3 with nine minutes left in the third quarter on October 30, 2005, running back Priest Holmes took a handoff on a second-and-10 from the Chiefs' 9-yard line. After Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman cracked helmets with Holmes in the backfield, Merriman got up. Holmes didn't. Finally, a wobbly Holmes wandered off the field. Doctors diagnosed him with pressure on his spine, and he sat out the rest of the 2005 season and all of 2006. In fact, Holmes still hasn't played a down of football since Merriman's potentially career-killing hit. (Holmes is attempting a comeback this season. After he returned to training camp, the Chiefs placed him on the nonfootball injury list, meaning he cannot practice or play for the first six weeks of the season.)

Other players have been even less lucky.

The death of Mike Webster is widely cited as the most egregious example of the NFL disability plan's failures. He's also a case study in the effects of undiagnosed concussions on former football players.

Webster was the hard-nosed Hall of Fame center who earned the nickname "Iron Mike" and played 15 seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers between 1974 and 1988, helping the team win four Super Bowl championships in six years.

But Webster's legacy off the field may be more significant.

"Mike Webster got screwed so bad, you can't believe it," says Vince Costello, a '60s-era linebacker for the Cleveland Browns and the New York Giants. Costello later coached with the Chiefs and now lives in Shawnee. "They let him die."

Webster retired as a Steeler after the 1988 season. He wouldn't stay retired long.

In 1989, the Chiefs hired Carl Peterson as president and general manager. Peterson signed Webster and former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski to provide veteran leadership to a team that had gone 4-11 the previous year, says Bob Moore, public relations director for the Chiefs.

When the '89 season began, the undersized and 37-year-old Webster earned a position as the team's starting center. Moore hasn't forgotten the way Webster bolted out of huddles to the line of scrimmage. "He'd run like crazy to be the first guy at the line of scrimmage, no matter how tired he was or what type of game that it was," Moore says. "It was almost like a psychological thing to the other team. They'd see this guy running to the line and they're tired as hell, and this guy is still playing."

Webster lived up to his indestructible billing throughout the '89 season; the next year, a rookie named Tim Grunhard took over as center. Webster retired and retreated to Wisconsin and then Pittsburgh.

Garrett Webster says his father's downward spiral was noticeable during his stint with the Chiefs. His father started forgetting things, and his weight ballooned to 300 pounds around the time he called it quits.

In 1994, the Chiefs brought back Webster as a strength and conditioning coach. Garrett Webster believes that his father's final football job was a sympathy hire.

"Mentally, he wasn't able to keep up with making sure that players were doing their reps and stuff like that," he says. "His car was a mess. I know he was living out of a hotel room."

"Carl [Peterson] wanted to help Mike," Moore says, "and helped him by giving him something to do here."

Twice a week, Mike Webster would drive his Chevy S-10 pickup truck from Kansas City to Lodi, Wisconsin, to see his family for a few hours. Webster also drove cross-country to Pittsburgh to see to his business interests — a real-estate company and other ventures that ultimately went bust.

Some nights, Webster slept in the Chiefs' locker room. He would ride the exercise bike, sit in the hot tub and sleep in the weight room or the locker room using a towel for a pillow.

But Webster couldn't hold the job for the whole season.

In the final years of his life, Webster lived out of his pickup truck and sometimes slept in it behind a friend's grocery store. Or he'd crash at an Amtrak station in downtown Pittsburgh. He wouldn't eat for days. He passed time at a 24-hour Kinko's, copying his NFL disability forms. His friend Sunny Jani would stash $20 bills in Webster's truck for those late nights when Webster would become lost and confused.

In 1997, Webster was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Two years later, police in Rochester, Pennsylvania, arrested him for forging Ritalin prescriptions.

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