In the first case, led by the former Chicago Bears defensive end Richard Dent, a federal judge initially dismissed the suit on the grounds that the league’s collective bargaining agreement required the parties to contest this kind of dispute in arbitration, not the courts. The players appealed, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled in their favor, reinstating the case.

“The parties to a C.B.A. cannot bargain for what is illegal,” the appeals court panel wrote.

In the second case, the players sued the clubs that employed the team doctors, not the league, for improperly distributing painkillers. The same judge who dismissed the first case ruled that the statute of limitations had passed. The Ninth Circuit heard arguments in an appeal in December.

In 2017, the N.F.L. Players Association filed a grievance against the league for overprescribing painkillers, not keeping accurate records of the drugs that teams distributed and denying the union's medical director access to meetings and documents relevant to the distribution of painkillers. The two sides are locked in arbitration.

Even before the legal action, the league’s pill culture had been well documented in tell-all books by former players and team doctors, and portrayed in books and films like “North Dallas Forty.”

What happens to players like Gibson when they leave the N.F.L. cocoon has been less explored. Like many players, his departure was abrupt, involuntary and wrenching. Although he no longer abused his body every week in practices and games, he could no longer rely on team doctors to help him cope with the lingering injuries he had to his neck, back, shoulders, knees and ankles that made getting out of bed in the morning a 30-minute ordeal.

So he coped on his own. He found new doctors, visited pain clinics and bought painkillers on the street and even from residents at retirement homes.

Addiction is expensive. Most pills are not covered by insurance. So like other addicts, retired N.F.L. players with addiction problems reach into their pockets. Spare cash disappears. Possessions are pawned. Homes are sold. Players are abandoned by their families, leaving men like Grimes sleeping alone on the floor in an empty house, as he recounted, with the utilities turned off, consumed by the pain of withdrawal.