An Eagles spokesman said the team had no comment.

Rayburn declined to specify who else provided painkillers during his playing career.

"I don't really want to implicate myself," he said.

Not surprised to be cut

Rayburn said he was not surprised that he was cut by the Eagles in May 2007. He had only two sacks in his last two seasons and just 12 tackles while starting no games in 2006.

"Looking back on it, if I put myself in the shoes of a scout watching film, I don't think my performance was good enough to stay in the league," Rayburn said. "I don't have any hard feelings toward anybody. It's all on you."

After trying to stick with the 49ers and Dolphins in 2007, Rayburn visited the Lions in early 2008.

"After that physical was over, they gave me a playbook and gave me a rental car and sent me to the hotel," Rayburn said. "About an hour later, I got another call. They said the orthopedic guys wanted to take another look at me. I went in, they basically told me, 'Here's a liability ... here's a liability. Your joints are torn up. There's really no way we can sign you with that type of damage.' "

Rayburn moved back here, to a nice brick house on a hill just outside town. He helped a little bit with a nearby high school football team. He donated money to upgrade Chickasha High's weight room. He fished and hunted, often at a pond maybe 400 yards from his house.

It was hard to admit his career was over at age 27.

"You go from a life where everything is structured - you're told when to be at breakfast, when to be at meetings, when to be at lunch, when to be at practice, when to go home," Rayburn said. "You go from that kind of structured environment to sitting at home, not really having anything to do. You sit in front of the TV and play video games. There's really nothing else to do."

And there was still pain, Rayburn said.

"You double the dosage that you normally take, and that leads to a higher tolerance, and then you need more to get the same effect," Rayburn said. "Eventually, it kind of snowballs out of control. The next thing you know, you're taking 100 a day. And you really don't know how you got there."

He found ways, Rayburn said, to get the pills he needed in Chickasha. They didn't all come from forging prescriptions.

"It's almost like you have a sixth sense for how to get them," Rayburn said. "You can walk by somebody, you can almost tell whether they take pills or not. You can almost sense who to talk to who will get you some, or what doctor you should go to who will get you something."

'My natural enemy'

On a sunny afternoon, Rayburn got out of his pickup truck and took an out-of-towner to see his wife at her real estate office on Grand Avenue just down the street from the Grand Care Pharmacy.

Rayburn walked across the lobby a little stiffly. When he started up a staircase to the second floor of the real estate office, he slowed down. His right leg bent in with each step.