Mr. Mackey is a sturdy 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds underneath his trademark black cowboy hat. He’s convivial with fans who remember him, but soon into any interaction quickly demonstrates his mental decline. During lunch on Friday, he used a spoon to drink his coffee, thinking it was soup, and uttered non sequiturs to almost any question, including several repetitions of “I want a cookie” and “I got in the end zone.”

His most prized possessions are two rings, which he repeatedly proffered on his fists. “I got this one for winning Super Bowl V, and this one when they put me in the Hall of Fame,” he said several times. The rings are so precious to him that last year, when airport security screeners asked him to remove them, he grew enraged, ran toward the gate and had to be wrestled to the ground, screaming, by armed officials.

“I was afraid they might shoot him dead,” Sylvia Mackey said. She no longer lets him fly; when the two traveled from Baltimore to Miami for this year’s Super Bowl, they rode Amtrak for 28 hours.

| ¶ 1:41 p.m.