"Shirley," he confessed, as they strolled, "I've been riding the bike again."
Mudd had almost died that summer, in 2000, in his first motorcycle wreck.
He had just left the Brickyard, where he had played golf on the speedway's infield, headed to the Colts' facility to prepare for an offseason minicamp. He rode down the five-lane street in flip-flops and shorts, his golf clubs strapped to his back . . . just in front of his helmet, which was strapped to the seat.
He almost always wore his helmet.
Mudd glanced up to check a traffic light, and as he entered the intersection a car turned left, into his path.
At 40 mph his bike hit the passenger door, totaling the car. His body flew 30 feet over the car's roof. He landed on his head.
Blood poured out of his fractured skull. Mudd briefly regained consciousness. He saw a man kneeling over him.
Praying.
"It's a miracle he's here," Shirley said.
Mudd suffered a concussion that blurred his vision for 3 weeks. He broke six ribs, his scapula and his wrists. After a week in the hospital he spent another 6 weeks in a hospital bed in their living room.
But by the end of summer he was sneaking off and riding again. Infidelity hardly could have hurt her more.
She asked him, "How can you do that to us?"
She knew how.
Football made this vibrant athlete a prisoner of a mangled body. Motorcycles are nearly all he has.
Mudd, 69, is the offseason gem in Andy Reid's reconstructed Eagles staff, the man who kept Peyton Manning protected for 12 years. He retired after the 2009 season but Reid and defensive-line coach Jim Washburn, an unlikely buddy who previously ran Tennessee's defensive line, coaxed him back into the NFL.
Even coaching wears him out.
Mudd has had nine knee operations, three to fully replace his left knee, ruined in 1970, the injury that cut short a possible Hall of Fame career as an offensive lineman.
