A Jets Great Faces Down the Physical Legacy of Football
On Christmas night, one of the fifty greatest New York Jets of all time arrived at our house in Atlanta for dinner. We’d already begun eating, unsure if he’d show up at all. But here Bill Mathis was, smiling as we helped him out of the car. He and his wife, Burnsie, are old friends of my stepmother, who invited them to join us for our holiday meal. I’d never met Bill before, but soon found myself—being the youngest and presumably strongest of the group—in an intimate embrace with him, lifting him out of the car. I put my hands under his huge arms and tried to pull his thick, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound trunk, clothed in an N.F.L.-labeled fleece jacket, from the passenger seat and into a wheelchair that Burnsie had removed from the back.