“He was an eight-time Pro Bowler and won Super Bowl titles with the Dolphins in 1972, for a team that finished 17-0, and 1973. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001.” Hall of Fame LB Nick Buoniconti has died at 78. He was known for his lossless season, but his relationship to football — from his son’s paralysis to his own battle with CTE — had its share of defeats. His life and experiences are in many ways the story of football in America. SL Price in Sports Illustrated: The Complicated Decline of Nick Buoniconti. “Buoniconti doesn’t explain that he can’t figure out how to knot a tie or towel his back. He doesn’t speak of his increasingly useless left hand, the increasingly frequent trips to the emergency room or how, just a few days earlier at his home on Long Island, he hurtled backward down a staircase and sprayed blood all over the hardwood, screaming afterward at Lynn, ‘I should just kill myself! It doesn’t matter!’ … ‘I feel lost,’ he said. ‘I feel like a child.'”