Joe DeLamielleure began worrying about his mind when Mike Webster died.
“Me and Mike were very similar,” DeLamielleure says. Both were Hall of Fame linemen known for never skipping a snap and rarely missing a Pro Bowl through the 1970s. But in retirement, their paths diverged. Webster suffered from depression and lived out of his truck before dying of a heart attack at age 50 in 2002. He would be the first former NFL player diagnosed with CTE. DeLamielleure’s peers from that era would keep dying over the next decade, often by their own hands. Terry Long. Ray Easterling.