Most avid Chiefs fans can cite the exploits of the great players in team history, but there are many other players who have escaped the hype but yet played vital roles in their teams' success and, for one reason or another, have slipped the minds of many fans then and now. Throughout the year, we profile some who did more than simply play a part when they took the field for the Kansas City Chiefs.

The picture that emerges when people think of Dave Szott is one of a secure, happy, loving, well-balanced Christian gentleman. It exists side by side with a tough-minded, disciplined athlete who could mix it up in the trenches with the best a nasty NFL defense could offer.

Szott, the team's starting left guard from 1990 to 2000, was never named to the NFL Pro Bowl for his play. He deserved to be — and most of his teammates, many of his opponents and coaches throughout the league, and even media — believed he deserved to be.

Rick Dean of the Topeka Capital-Journal, who covered Szott throughout his career in Kansas City, called him "the best guard to have never played in the Pro Bowl." Szott was another of GM Carl Peterson's and Head Coach Marty Schottenheimer's discoveries when the Chiefs' staff coached the annual Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.

After seeing him, working with him, and beginning to understand the man that he was, Peterson drafted him in the seventh-round of the 1990 draft. He immediately became a starter and missed just two games in his first eight seasons before suffering a torn biceps in 1998. Szott's play was a product of technique and instinct.

He had been a reserve offensive guard his freshman year at Penn State, but the coaches moved him to defensive line the next year, and he eventually started every game as a nose tackle as a junior. Finally, in his senior year, Szott moved back to his preferred position at guard.

Never expecting to be drafted, he was about to go fishing when Marty Schottenheimer called on the last day of the draft, saying, "It's not where you start, it's where you finish."

Playing alongside Will Shields and Tim Grunhard for most of his career, Szott and his teammates on Kansas City's offensive line defined the way Marty Schottenheimer wanted to play. "Marty-ball" it was called, and it was highlighted by a tough-as-nails ground game with big backs propelled by a grind-it-out offensive line. Even when Schottenheimer introduced a "West Coast" style of play, his line play still shined as his teams in Kansas City counted 100 wins over a decade.

Szott handled some of the biggest names on the league's defensive lines during those days — John Randl, Cortez Kennedy and Chester McGlockton. "He isn't the biggest guy in the world," said Schottenheimer of Szott, "so he has to be clinically sound. But he's also a tough-nosed guy who's willing to stick his hat in there and go to war."

The toughness on the field contrasted with how he conducted himself off it. A deeply religious man, he never sought notoriety, admitting, "the less an offensive lineman hears his name called, the better off he is." But he was rewarded when Pro Football Weekly rated him the number one guard going into the 1997 season, and the Pro Football Writers selected him to their 1998 All-Pro team.

What the Chiefs thought of Szott was evident when they permitted him to miss Monday and Tuesday practices late in his career so he could give his wife help with his son, Shane, who had cerebral palsy. Seeking more care for Shane and for more help from his wife's parents, he moved back to New Jersey and eventually called it a career.

Said Carl Peterson, the man who had drafted him, "in my 20-plus years in this business, there are very few players that I can say I think have distinguished themselves and made my life easier by not having to worry about where they are off the field."

Szott, for his part, was quick to thank Peterson and Schottenheimer for their trust.

"When you have a personal problem, you put in 10 years and work hard and do everything you can for the club, they're going to give back when the situation dictates," he said. "I came in here as a seventh-round pick and they gave me every shot in the world. I can't forget what they've done for me. Younger players could take a lesson from all this."

Years later, at the request of the Schottenheimer family, he traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, on this occasion as a man of faith and not a player, to offer some comforting remarks when his former coach was remembered in a private memorial service.