The Seahawks drafted Coutu in the seventh round in 2008 and then made the atypical decision to keep two kickers — Olindo Mare was the other — on their roster all season. Coutu was inactive for every game, including Seattle’s Week 17 matchup at Arizona, when he was in Vail, Colo., he said, undergoing hip surgery.

The following training camp, Coutu struggled with kickoffs, and the Seahawks released him. It would be another two years — after another hip operation, and despite workouts for multiple teams — before he resurfaced on an N.F.L. roster. He spent three weeks with Seattle in the summer of 2011 and less than a week on Jacksonville’s practice squad until, a few days before Christmas, the Buffalo Bills called.

They signed him to kick in their season finale at New England, a 49-21 loss. Coutu said he had an “unbelievable” warm-up but missed his only field-goal attempt, a 45-yarder just before halftime that sailed wide left. He did not recall how many extra points he kicked (three), or how many times he kicked off (four). Until he was reminded, Coutu did not remember that the last time he kicked was for Omaha of the United Football League, in 2012.

Coutu said he thought the hip operations compromised his mechanics, precipitating the ruptured hamstring he sustained with Jacksonville a few months before that aborted comeback in the U.F.L. He has coped by embracing the next phase of his life, one he did not think would come so soon.

“You can sulk, but it is what it is,” Coutu said. “I gave it everything I had.”

Mark Reed

Bills at Colts, Oct. 16, 1983

Mark Reed has switched offices several times across more than three decades at 3M, but a few keepsakes have braved every move. One hangs from his wall: the team photograph of the 1983 Baltimore Colts.

Reed is sitting in the front row.

On Oct. 16 of that season, his third in the N.F.L., Reed replaced Mike Pagel at quarterback in the fourth quarter of a 30-7 home loss to Buffalo. He completed 6 of 10 passes for 34 yards and had an interception, a bad throw that even now he wants back.