Fifty years ago, as the initial first-round draft choice of Atlanta's newborn NFL team, Tommy Nobis embodied the hope that now flows through his adopted hometown as the Falcons face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI.

In Atlanta, his name and No. 60 adorn the Falcons' Ring of Honor and the headquarters of Nobis Works, the nonprofit he helped create in 1977 that has trained disabled clients to fill 25,000 jobs in 17 states.

He also holds a place of honor in his home state of Texas, where for years after he departed the University of Texas as a two-time All-American, freshman players were required to face his photo, place hand over heart and sing the song that summarized his sideline-to-sideline style: "The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day …"

Super Bowl Sunday, however, likely will be a quiet day at the Nobis home in suburban Atlanta.

Perhaps Nobis, 73, will watch the game on television with his wife of 50 years, Lynn; he watched the Falcons' NFC Championship Game victory over Green Bay but gave no clue as to whether he knew what his old team had accomplished.

"We've told him the Falcons are in the Super Bowl, and we wear red and black," Lynn Nobis said. "But it doesn't seem to click. I don't know if he understands."

Like many of his NFL and college contemporaries, Nobis has physical and cognitive ailments. He is among 250-plus past or present beneficiaries of the 88 Plan, the NFL program that reimburses retired players for expenses for treatment arising from dementia, Parkinson's, ALS or other neurological disorders, and he was among the plaintiffs in the recently settled NFL concussion lawsuit.

He is, from the banks of the Colorado River in Austin to Peachtree Creek in Atlanta, a genuine football icon who today, with his family, must shoulder the fearsome toll taken by the sport he loved.

"It's sad what football has done to these players," Lynn said. "But I know he loved it more than anything. He wouldn't have had it any other way."

Lynn and Tommy Nobis grew up in San Antonio (he attended Jefferson High School; she went to Alamo Heights). At Texas, he played center and middle linebacker as part of Darrell Royal's defense that harassed Navy's Roger Staubach in the 1964 Cotton Bowl and stopped Alabama's Joe Namath inches short of pay dirt in the 1965 Orange Bowl.

"I'd like to have seven Nobises," Royal once said. "But that wouldn't be fair."

He made the cover of Sports Illustrated and Life magazine with his freckles, red-haired crewcut and 191/2-inch neck. Sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz described him as "Huckleberry Finn with muscles."

A winner playing for losers

After UT, Nobis was a prime target in the AFL-NFL signing skirmishes. The AFL Oilers wanted him. Astronaut Frank Borman radioed in from Gemini 7: "Tell Nobis to sign with Houston."

But Nobis opted for the NFL and the expansion Falcons. He was the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1966, averaging 21 tackles a game, and he was a five-time Pro Bowl selection and three times a first- or second-team All-Pro.

"He was the team," said Jerry Rhea, a fellow Texan who was for years the Falcons' athletic trainer. "He was the face of the franchise. We weren't winning, but he was a winner."

Slowed by injuries in 1969 and 1971, Nobis retired in 1976 having played for teams with a combined record of 50-100-4 with no playoff appearances. Accordingly, while he is a member of the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame, he has never come close to enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"With any other team, he would be in the Hall of Fame," said longtime Falcons teammate and former University of Houston player Greg Brezina. "He has always been the measure of a Falcons player. Even with the success of this year's team, he is the greatest Falcon ever, not only for his play but his character."

Nobis remained with the Falcons in a variety of capacities after retirement, but that relationship ended with Arthur Blank's purchase of the franchise.

His other post-retirement focus, along with his family, was the Tommy Nobis Center and its vocational training programs.

"Tommy was really involved," said Nobis Works CEO Dave Ward. "He was never happier than when he was with the people in this building, advocating and getting people hired with the same passion he devoted to football."

Nobis kept in touch with Falcons alumni and his UT teammates, some of whom held a mini-reunion in Atlanta five years ago. Six months ago, he spoke to his hometown San Antonio Express-News about his days playing sandlot football on the city's East Side.

Now, however, he has grown silent. He was hospitalized three times and spent time in assisted living before Lynn moved him back home, where she said he seems more at ease.

"We've been married 50 years as of last June, for better and worse," she said. "He would have done the same for me."

The cognitive issues faced by former players, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease that has been diagnosed post-mortem in more than 300 patients, "is a family disease," said Lise Hudson, whose husband, Nobis' former UT teammate Jim Hudson, died from CTE in 2013.

"What can you say when a man looks at his children and they're trying to get him to remember the house they were brought up in and he says, 'I'm just glad I remember you?' " Hudson said. "The bad thing about CTE, one of many, is that there are times when they are lucid and know what is happening. It's a slow, slow death."

Nobis suffered at least three concussions in the NFL plus an unknown number in college and high school. During his UT days, he said that in the trenches on the goal line, "Your first contact is with your head. When you're 2 yards from a touchdown, you're gutting it."

Brain going to research group

As she contemplates the approaching end, Lynn Nobis hopes to return her husband's remains to Texas, perhaps to the campus where he became the greatest Longhorns defender ever. His brain, she said, will be donated to a research group in Atlanta.

Another group, the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation, has received 1,467 pledges from former athletes and military veterans and announced Thursday that 30 former NFL players, including former 49ers offensive lineman and CBS Sports analyst Randy Cross, had pledged their brains to research as part of the first Brain Pledge Month.

Chris Nowinski, the former college football player and pro wrestler who is co-founder and CEO of the foundation, said each donated brain helps spur research into CTE through a network of more than 50 study groups worldwide.

"Last year, the first post-mortem diagnostic criteria were published, and we are much closer to diagnosing it in living people," Nowinski said. "With increased awareness, we have a chance to prevent the disease in the next generation. There's less hitting in practice, fewer kids are playing football at 5 years old, and we are turning this thing around."

Football provided a good life for Tommy Nobis and his family, and his wife is grateful. She knows he is grateful as well.

"There are so many things I look back on now," she said. "We have three kids and eight grandchildren, all of them here, and we enjoy them. Tommy loved the guys he played with. He loved the game. He loved to watch it. He loved everything about football. Sometimes I get sad and have a pity party, but God has blessed us. We're good."

And on this Super Bowl Sunday, with Atlanta playing for the Lombardi Trophy, she adopts the phrase that has been a rallying cry for the Falcons and their fans.

"I'll just say, 'Rise up,' " Lynn said.