End Zone

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.

In November 1999, the NFL disability panel approved Webster for benefits. His disability was classified as "football degenerative disability pension," and he received $100,020 annually and a retroactive payment of $309,230 to cover the 1996 through 1999 seasons. He sent most of the money back home to his family.

Three years later, on September 24, 2002, a 50-year-old Webster, suffering from depression and dementia, died of a heart attack. Doctors concluded that, during his career snapping footballs, Webster had suffered the equivalent of 25,000 automobile crashes.

In 2004, Webster's family sued the NFL for disability payments dating back to March 1991. The Websters claimed that he was disabled five years before he started receiving benefits. His estate won a $1.6 million judgment in federal court last December. A federal judge wrote that the NFL's management of the plan "indicates culpable conduct, if not bad faith."

But even after that decision, union head Upshaw was far from conciliatory, saying he'd fight the same fight over again.

"The NFL says it's Mike Webster making bad decisions," Garrett Webster says. "Well, if your brain's messed up, you're going to make bad decisions.

"They'll have to answer for it one day, whether it's to a judge or to God or whatever," he adds. "This is a human being that the NFL went out there and basically destroyed and left for dead. It cost him his family. It cost him his manhood. It cost him money, time, everything."