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But over the 11 years he played as a professional, the family can recall at least 10 concussions that he suffered on the pitch. That's the bare minimum, as he may have had many other knocks to the head that weren't registered.
"He never came off the field and would always continue to play, so a lot of times I wouldn't learn 'til after the game," Alicia recalls. Duerson would tell her: "I took a strong hit to the head, I'm a little dizzy, let's drive home," and would try and shake it off.
"Back then it was a man's game," she says. "Gladiator. Ra, ra. He'd say he felt nauseous and need to rest, and go and lie down for a while." Within days, sometimes hours, he'd be back on his feet and back on the field.
For a long time, everything Duerson touched turned to gold. On top of his two Super Bowls, he was declared NFL Man of the Year in 1987 and NFL Humanitarian of the Year the following year.
After he retired from the game in 1993 the successes continued. He refreshed his economics degree with a business course at Harvard and entered the food business, purchasing three McDonald's franchises in Louisville, Kentucky, before setting up his own business, Duerson Foods, supplying sausages to chains.
When times were good, they were very good. They owned a house in Highland Park, a leafy town on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Chicago. They travelled the world, flying Concorde.
But from around 2005, almost a decade after he had given up football, their fortunes started to turn. It was such a slow process, like watching a child grow, that Alicia hardly noticed at first. It started with Duerson making bad business calls in a way that was unlike him.
"He was making hasty decisions. A lot of things that would come natural to him wouldn't any more. He started to lose his ability to function, to think things clearly through," Alicia says.
The business started to suffer, profits to fall and debts to mount. At the same time, Duerson himself began to decline. He had severe headaches with increasing frequency. He would have sharp mood swings, happy one moment, sad or angry the next. He would lash out verbally at those around him. Small things annoyed him, particularly his own inability to do simple things. He would get lost going to places he had been to umpteen times before, as his memory started to fail.