He sat on his helmet with his face in his hands, an utterly dejected solitary figure on the field at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, contemplating his team's 35-34 loss to Virginia Tech in the 1986 New Peach Bowl.

It was a devastating end to a season full of miracles.

Those were difficult final moments of quarterback Erik Kramer's two-year career at NC State, which to that point had been something that seemed to be dreamed up by a scriptwriter in Hollywood, Kramer's hometown.

He had come to NC State from Pierce Junior College in Los Angeles, having never started a high school football game and having sat on the bench his entire freshman year of junior college before finally getting a chance as a sophomore.

From there, he lived a football fairytale that ended with back-to-back first-team All-ACC seasons at NC State and a 14-year professional football career. He led Pierce to an appearance in the Junior College National Championship Game and then won the starting quarterback job at NC State in the spring of 1985. By 1986, he was the ACC Player of the Year.

He thought he might be able to make it as a pro, but he was not taken in the 1987 NFL draft. So he followed the scripts from his past: he looked for an opportunity and found an opening. He played seven games for the Atlanta Falcons as a replacement player during the 1987 strike, something that didn't endear him to picketing players outside the stadium. He went to Canada to play for the Calgary Stampeders. He hooked on with the Detroit Lions.

For the next 12 years, he was a regular NFL starter, with the Lions, Chicago Bears and San Diego Chargers. Of the five former NC State quarterbacks to regularly start in the NFL, Kramer's story is the most remarkable.

In 1992, he led the Lions to the NFC Championship game. In 1995, he set more than a dozen passing records for the Chicago Bears, many of which still stand.

Not even Russell Wilson's rise to fame and a Super Bowl championship can match the unlikeliness of Kramer's career, something that has been largely unremembered in between Wolfpack greats Roman Gabriel, Philip Rivers, Wilson and Mike Glennon.

"Erik was the best quarterback I ever played with, on any level," said former Wolfpack wide receiver Danny Peebles, who is forever tied to Kramer for the 1986 Hail Mary that beat South Carolina after time expired. "He was a leader, a California cool guy who was a great football player here at NC State and in the NFL.

"He always reminded me of the 'Sunshine' character in 'Remember the Titans,' the flashy quarterback with a cool style."

That was the Erik Kramer most of us knew, a feisty competitor who made things happen on the field.

So what was so hard to digest late last week, when news rolled that Kramer had attempted suicide in a California motel, was how such a thing could happen to the happy-go-lucky guy who spent two remarkable years with the Wolfpack.

In his first trip back to Raleigh for a spring player reunion in 2010, Kramer was so full of joy after reuniting with former offensive coordinator Dana Bible, who had originally recruited him to NC State under head coach Tom Reed.

The simple declarative made by Kramer's ex-wife, Marshawn Linville-Kramer, in the days that followed the attempted suicide stuck hard: "That's not the Erik Kramer I knew."

It is true that Kramer's life in recent years have been filled with pain. After his football career ended, he settled into a job as a television analyst. In 2010, he and Marshawn divorced after 23 years of marriage, though by all accounts it was an amicable separation.

In 2011, his oldest son Griffen, died of a heroin overdose. In the aftermath, a man who was with Griffen was charged with manslaughter for leaving him unattended for more than 12 hours after the overdose.

Marshawn Linville-Kramer implied in news reports last week that Kramer had long suffered from pain caused by head injuries throughout his football career. He retired in 1999 because of a neck injury.

Kramer has been hospitalized since his suicide attempt with what were characterized as "non-life-threatening injuries," and there have been no recent updates about his recovery.

For Peebles, the news was a gut-punch. He was preparing to be best man for former track teammate Mike Patton, in a town halfway between Detroit and Chicago, two places where Kramer played professionally.

Peebles has been around the great joy of athletics his entire career, as a track and football star. He's also been around the pain that it has caused.

As a freshman in college, Peebles and his wife lost a child that was stillborn. During his track career, one of his teammates tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge during an NCAA competition. The runner didn't die, but was permanently paralyzed. Two of his NFL teammates committed suicide following their football careers. Peebles himself was briefly paralyzed after a career-ending hit in a game while playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

"The pain of losing a child is one of the worst things you can go through," Peebles said. "I know how hard it was for me to have a stillborn child; I can't imagine how hard it was for Erik to lose an 18-year-old son.

"It's something you never get over."

Other former Wolfpack teammates counseled Kramer, as he tried to fight through depression.

At times, he seemed like the same happy-go-lucky leader they knew 30 years ago, the California-cool competitor who had such success throughout his career.

Marty Jacumin, a former offensive lineman for the Wolfpack who is now the pastor at Raleigh's Bay Leaf Baptist Church, remembers the time when he let Duke All-America linebacker Mike Junkin get through the line and crush Kramer in the backfield.

"When we got back in the huddle, I thought he might light me up or something," Jacumin said. "But he didn't. He just sort of grinned and said, 'Hey, let's try to get him next time.'

"That's just the kind of leader he was. He wanted to win, but he was a great teammate."

Jacumin reached out on a couple of occasions when Kramer came back to Raleigh for the annual spring players' reunion. When Dillen Kramer died four years ago, Erik changed. His former teammates struggled to watch him falter in the face of depression.

"There was a lot of brokenness in his life over the loss of his son," said Jacumin, who had several conversations with Kramer in the aftermath. "The sadness I saw was always related to the death of his son, something none of us that haven't been through it can even fathom.

"When our conversations ended, though, he always seemed to find something positive to end with, usually about his younger son Dillon. He had so much to look forward to. I never imagined that he might have reached the point he would try to take his own life."

It's certainly not the Erik Kramer that most of the Wolfpack knew.

It's not the Erik Kramer I know, the one who is hurting, the one who needs, more than ever, the strength of the Pack to help pull him through.

We can't leave him sitting alone on his helmet, devastated by the losses he has suffered in recent years.