The NFL game Monday was suspended not long after Bills safety Damar Hamlin went down after making a tackle on Bengals receiver Tee Higgins.

The tackle by Hamlin in the first quarter was rugged, but we see dozens as hard or harder in every NFL game. What we don’t see is a player stand up, as Hamlin did, and then collapse to the field, motionless. We don’t see first responders administer CPR, as they did for Hamlin.

And it’s rare to see any player taken away in an ambulance.

As I write this, Hamlin is in critical condition at a hospital not far from Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati. The question is, of course, how critical is he? Will he survive? And, if he does, will he be OK?

The collision between the safety and the receiver was one in which Hamlin seemed to take the greater blow to his head and chest. Did that cause his collapse? Who can tell? Who knows anything for sure right now?

But one thing this event did, even as fans sat in silence, then slowly trickled out of the stadium in stunned sadness and disbelief, was remind us of how violent the game of football, at the elite level, truly is.

Maybe we don’t see it all the time. The TV cameras are great at turning away, cutting to commercials, moving cheerily along, with an analyst later reporting that a player was ”injured,” likely ”done for the game.” The injury could be a twisted ankle, a bruised shoulder. Or it could be a compound fracture, a mutilated knee, a concussion severe enough to cause dementia 30 years down the road.

I remember seeing Lions receiver Chuck Hughes lying dead on the field in a game against the Bears in 1971. I was certain he had been killed, maybe by the biggest headhunter of all, Bears middle linebacker Dick Butkus, who was one of the first to notice Hughes down and motionless.

But Butkus had nothing to do with Hughes’ death. It was caused by a heart attack. To date, Hughes is the only player to die on an NFL field. And, tellingly, that game more than a half-century ago continued to the end.

This one in Cincinnati did not. Thank God. It’s for sure the players wouldn’t have gone back on the field, even if somebody had declared that, like the circus the NFL often is likened to, ”The show must go on.”

In a way, the whole nation paused as the game was suspended. TV networks that have little to do with sports, such as CNN and Fox News, abruptly switched their programming to the unfolding tragedy. What we experienced was maybe, just maybe, a serious collective re-examination — just for a spell, while time was dangling with portent — of our love for violence and the willful damaging of other men.

Earlier in the game, Bills cornerback Taron Johnson had gone down with an apparent head injury. After he was attended to by trainers, he made it off the field under his own power. No big deal. Who knows what unseen damage was done? He didn’t stay down. That’s all that gets anybody’s attention.

I stop and rewind and pause many plays in every game that I watch on TV because I notice the momentary head-on collisions, the blurred helmet-to-helmet blows, that happen all the time. They do. Constantly. The players are like two rams, sometimes three, butting for control, for status. And it’s not taught. Some athletes will do it instinctively.

It’s that primitive. Low man wins. Most brutal man wins. Axioms. The league knows it. Anybody with anything to do with the game knows it.

The rules only soften the most glaring viciousness. And the rules only have been tightened because of all the demented, damaged old players lurching about and the younger ones committing suicide (also from the chronic traumatic encephalopathy that affected their elders). This became embarrassing to the powers that be.

Football is its own game, an American game, perfect for a country with more guns than people. Football has rules that keep it on the edge of the uncivilized, jousting with the limits of human size, speed, musculature and aggression.

It’s a wonderful game. But something inside it is horrible. Young men play it, want to play it, just as they sign up for war, do so many things that risk injury and death. Myself, I loved playing football.

You’re strong. You’re full of juice. You’re immortal, baby.

Until you’re not.

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CLEVELAND – There’s a good chance that as this is being read, Donovan Mitchell has just scored another basket against the Bulls.

Considering he finished with 71 – the most an individual player had ever dropped on the franchise – it wouldn’t be far-fetched.

The sting in the Bulls locker room after blowing the 21-point first-half lead to lose 145-134 in overtime to the Cavaliers?

It should have never reached that extra session.

With 4.1 seconds left and Cleveland down three, Mitchell made his first free throw, leaving him with no choice but to purposely miss the second. That he did, but then had the wherewithal to cut toward the rim, avoid the Patrick Williams box-out, and put his own miss in to tie the game.

DeMar DeRozan had a tough look on a three-point attempt and missed, and once the overtime started the Bulls looked defeated. They eventually were, as Mitchell continued his scoring assault in the extra session, giving him the highest scoring performance in the NBA since Kobe Bryant’s 81 in 2006.

“It’s humbling, and it hasn’t even sunk in yet,” Mitchell said after. “I haven’t been the best, and just needed to force myself into the game. I tried to set the tone early. Coming into the third, I just told myself, ‘Make the simple play.’ ”

That he did, scoring 24 points in the third alone.

But it was the free throw blunder that was hard for the Bulls (16-21) to swallow.

Coach Billy Donovan rarely criticizes anything outside of his own locker room, but had trouble with that play.

“It’s a clear violation, unequivocally [Mitchell was] crossing the line on the basket before the ball ever touches the rim,” Donovan said. “He beat Patrick, but kind of the reason he beat Patrick was because he went in there too early. Listen, in that situation we have to find a way to come up with the ball.”

Williams knew that, and even had a hard time getting through the post-game interview without showing some of that emotion.

“I did hear other guys saying he kind of left early, regardless, I feel like we’ve got to come up with that rebound, regardless,” Williams said. “Obviously the officiating didn’t go our way all night, so shouldn’t have expected it to go our way late in the game, especially down the stretch.

“Put that on me. I’ve just got to get that rebound, anyway. I’ve just got to get it.”

The other gut-punch in the latest loss was the Bulls couldn’t have asked for a better first half, looking like they knew Cleveland’s offensive sets better than the Cavs did.

Not only did they handcuff the home team for just 20 points in the second quarter, but went into the halftime locker room with six steals, and 13 points off of eight turnovers. Arguably the best opening half the Bulls have played since they dismantled Dallas early last month.

All that hard work quickly disappeared, however, and Mitchell was the reason why.

All Mitchell did was help cut into a one-time 21-point deficit, and doing it from everywhere. The one place that irked Donovan the most, however, was they put Mitchell at the free throw line far too often.

Of his 71 points, the guard hit 7-for-15 from three-point range, but also went 20-of-25 from the free throw line.

Donovan threw Alex Caruso on him, Ayo Dosunmu, double-teamed, everything and anything, and it still didn’t slow him down.

Near the end of his presser, Mitchell was asked if he had ever scored 71 in a game at any level, and after thinking about it, smiled and replied, “in [NBA]2K.”

Note: Javonte Green missed his ninth game with inflammation in his right knee, and this latest setback was starting to concern the highly-energetic wing player enough so that he will again see team doctors in Chicago on Tuesday.

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We lost some important sports people in 2022, and I’d like to say a little about a few before the scorebook softly closes.

o Ray Guy, 72. This guy named Guy made punting look like a part of ballet, like a ”Swan Lake” pas de deux with the football as his partner. He’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the only punter in there. He made nailing a punt into the coffin corner a key part of the Raiders’ defensive strategy and a huge part of their offensive strategy, as well.

Offense not moving? No problem. Guy, right foot way above his head, will blast us out of here.

His coach, John Madden, said of this tall, lean fellow who also could pass, run and tackle: ”Everyone said, ‘How can you draft a punter No. 1?’ We said: ‘Because he’s not only the best punter in the draft, he’s the best punter that’s ever punted a football.’ ”

And he was.

o Bruce Sutter, 69. The former Cubs pitcher blew out his elbow and seemingly was done as a potential major-leaguer back in 1973. His 88 mph fastball was apple pie for sluggers.

Then, like Luke Skywalker getting that green lightsaber from Obi-Wan Kenobi, he got the split-fingered fastball from minor-league pitching coach Fred Martin in 1973, and batters began swinging at pitches that were two inches off the plate. He had 300 saves and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2006, and he won a World Series with the Cardinals.

But Sutter earned the 1979 National League Cy Young Award with the Cubs, and for years he had a lot of young Chicagoans trying to stretch their fingers apart and throw that ridiculous pitch. What did we find out there in the sandlots and driveways and backyards? Impossible.

o John Clayton, 67. The longtime ESPN pro football insider was a cheerful, circumspect fellow whom everyone who cared about the NFL — say, most folks in 32 of America’s biggest cities — came across one way or another.

We scribes remember John as another ink-stained dude in the press box — he started as a writer with the Pittsburgh Press — but his rimless glasses and nerdy, professor-like appearance made him eminently notable in a TV universe full of polished, pretty humans.

Yet the way most sports fans will remember him is in the legendary ”This is SportsCenter” commercial, in which he yanked off a faux business-suit jacket to reveal he was wearing a black, sleeveless Slayer T-shirt in his Goth-like bedroom with death-metal posters everywhere. He let down a long, blond ponytail behind his balding pate, cranked the volume on his stereo, jumped on his bed, grabbed an old box of takeout noodles and hollered, ”Hey, Mom, I’m done with my segment!”

Lord, I laugh at it yet. I hope John is chuckling now, too. He was a good and decent man.

o Earnie Shavers, 78. The former heavyweight boxer will be most remembered for three things. First, he came along during the golden age of heavyweight boxing in the 1970s, when the division overflowed with talent such as Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Ken Norton and one Muhammad Ali.

Second, Shavers lasted 15 rounds against Ali and hit the champ with blows that would have felled almost anyone else.

Which leads to the third thing: Shavers widely was considered at the time to be the hardest puncher in the history of the heavyweight division. Ali said after their bout: ” Earnie hit me so hard, it shook my kinfolk in Africa.”

But Ali had the gift of words, and he often said clever things about his foes and himself. Indeed, he once said: ”I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”

But Shavers and most fighters were not like Ali. Shavers was all business, and he had 70 knockouts in 76 victories to show for it. But he weighed less than 215 pounds, and when he fought Ali in their title bout, he was such an underdog that there was no betting line for the fight. Yet with his shaved head and thunderous right hand, he was a fearsome presence.

What Holmes said after his 1979 fight against Shavers was the real deal, pure observation, nothing but insight. It sticks in one’s mind.

”When Earnie Shavers hit me,” Holmes said, ”I thought people were taking my picture.”

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Chicago Bears staff changing after the end of this season

There is still one week to go in the regular season for the Chicago Bears, but their coaching staff is already undergoing changes.

According to ESPN’s Courtney Cronin, Bears defensive backs coach James Rowe is leaving the team when the season concludes to become the passing coordinator at the University of South Florida (USF).

Per source, Bears DBs coach James Rowe is leaving Chicago after the season to become USF’s defensive passing game coordinator on Alex Golesh’s new staff. Rowe, a 2009 graduate of South Florida, returns to his alma mater spending the last 2 seasons coaching in the NFL.

— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) January 2, 2023

Rowe followed Matt Eberflus, who took over as head coach of Chicago in the summer after he spent a year coaching the cornerbacks for the Indianapolis Colts. Rowe has mostly worked as a college coach before his time in Indianapolis, however he did work as the Washington Commanders’ assistant defensive backs coach from 2017 to 2019.

Rowe was tasked with developing a youthful secondary in his lone season with Chicago, which featured rookies Kyler Gordon and Jaquan Brisker as well as veterans Jaylon Johnson and Eddie Jackson. Chicago secondary notched 10 interceptions under Rowe’s direction, while Gordon and Brisker developed and Jackson had a breakout season before suffering a season-ending injury.

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CLEVELAND – It hasn’t been the smoothest 2022-23 campaign for Zach LaVine so far.

The Bulls guard had his offseason regiment thrown off after a clean-up surgery on his left knee, came into the regular season dealing with a load management schedule because of that knee, had some rough on-the-court moments, and was even benched by coach Billy Donovan in the finals minutes in a loss to Orlando.

And while the Bulls guard is never one to be short with the media, there have been some instances where he’s been almost defiant with the line of questioning.

On Monday he took a much different approach, instead being very introspective when it came to discussing the criticisms of his defense.

It started as a simple question about the likelihood if he could ever return to the player that was sporting a career-best 103.4 defensive rating through the first 15 games of last season.

He knew that rating number well, saying “103.4” as the question was being asked.

The number he didn’t want to be as acquainted with? The 115.8 defensive rating he came into the Cavaliers game with, which was the second-worst on the team with only Goran Dragic (118.3) lower.

The criticism of LaVine hasn’t been his on-the-ball defense or his effort at the start of possessions, as much as letting up far too often as the possession goes on. A criticism he was willing to take “on the chin.”

“That might just be finishing plays as well as the possession goes on,” LaVine told the Sun-Times. “Getting a rebound, one more contest, one more rotation, one more effort … and you know, you can take that on the chin and say, ‘Yeah, there’s been possessions where if I have to make that last rotation, I have to give a better effort toward that.’ That’s something I do have to be better at.”

Not just because he carries that max contract designation on his back, either.

LaVine remained very consistent with the approach that there was no added pressure with the five-year, $215-million max deal he signed in July. It’s not about improving his effort on defense because of the new tax bracket, as much as it’s improving it for his teammates.

The Sun-Times, as well as other media outlets, reported that the spark in that Dec. 18 halftime locker room incident in Minnesota had in large part to do with LaVine’s lack of communication on defense and finishing out possessions.

The frustration was his teammates knew he had more to give in that department.

LaVine showed with Team USA in the summer of 2021 that he can lock-down opposing players, and then he carried that mentality into the start of last season. The numbers backed his play, but when the left knee began to act up in early December, the defense dropped off.

With his knee concerns currently in the rear view mirror, it’s about getting back to that guy that was holding up a gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics.

“I don’t look at defensive rating because a lot of other numbers impact it,” LaVine said. “It’s like plus/minus. If you’re on a good team, your plus/minus is going to be high. If you’re on a bad team your plus/minus is going to be low. That’s just the way it is. I go on how I’m playing.

“Obviously, I always feel good on the ball [defensively]. If I’m active, getting in passing lanes, making the right rotations, I’m locked in on that side of the ball, and that’s how I judge. I feel like I’ve been a lot better and I need to continue to focus on that. At the end of the day, I’ve got to do my job down there just like everyone else on that side of the ball. I’ve got to take care of business.”

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Bears wide receiver Dante Pettis was released from the hospital Sunday after a head injury in the Lions game left him with blurred vision. He flew home separately from the team and was still being evaluated by doctors Monday, coach Matt Eberflus said.

Eberflus said Sunday that Pettis cleared the concussion protocol, but was hospitalized as a precaution.

Pettis is fifth on the team with 17 catches for 226 yards and three touchdowns.

Cousins, Jefferson to play

While the Bears weigh whether to preserve quarterback Justin Fields by sitting him Sunday, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell indicated quarterback Kirk Cousins and star wide receiver Justin Jefferson will play.

O’Connell said Monday he was “still working through” his plan, but when asked specifically about those two he said potential personnel changes would be “more subtle” because the Vikings are battling the 49ers for the No. 2 seed and home field for the first two rounds of the playoffs.

He added that the Vikings “still have a lot to play for just from a momentum standpoint” after losing to the Packers 41-17 on Sunday.

Kickoff at noon

The NFL announced a 12 p.m. kickoff for Bears-Vikings. All Week 18 games were labeled TBA so the league could put those with the most playoff implications in prime time and ensure that teams competing against each other for positioning were playing at the same time.

Of the Bears’ 17 games, 14 will have been noon kickoffs..

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The Bears will be one of the first teams to decide their fate in April.

The Texans and the Bears are the two teams still in contention for the first overall choice in the 2023 NFL Draft as of Week 18. Houston currently maintains a slender half-game advantage, while Chicago is guaranteed a spot in the top four no matter what happens in the last week.

The No. 2 pick is presently held by Chicago, and a loss against Minnesota would ensure that choice. But even with a Houston victory, the top pick is still up for grabs. If Chicago were to secure the top overall pick, there would be no shortage of interested parties looking to trade up to that position in order to select either Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud or Alabama’s Bryce Young as their quarterback.

According to Ryan Taylor “The Bears still have a chance to obtain the first overall pick, but need the Houston Texans to defeat the Indianapolis Colts – who the Texans tied with in Week 1 – to give the Bears a chance”

However, Chicago have lost enough games at this point in the season to secure themselves a top-4 pick in the draft, which should be enough to bolster a portion of the squad. Some experts predict that the Bears will compete for one of the best athletic and defensive prospects available in the draft. It’s rumored that the Bears want to sign both Jalen Carter (DT, Georgia) and Will Anderosn Jr. (DE, Alabama).

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The Bears will be one of the first teams to decide their fate in April.

The Texans and the Bears are the two teams still in contention for the first overall choice in the 2023 NFL Draft as of Week 18. Houston currently maintains a slender half-game advantage, while Chicago is guaranteed a spot in the top four no matter what happens in the last week.

The No. 2 pick is presently held by Chicago, and a loss against Minnesota would ensure that choice. But even with a Houston victory, the top pick is still up for grabs. If Chicago were to secure the top overall pick, there would be no shortage of interested parties looking to trade up to that position in order to select either Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud or Alabama’s Bryce Young as their quarterback.

According to Ryan Taylor “The Bears still have a chance to obtain the first overall pick, but need the Houston Texans to defeat the Indianapolis Colts – who the Texans tied with in Week 1 – to give the Bears a chance”

However, Chicago have lost enough games at this point in the season to secure themselves a top-4 pick in the draft, which should be enough to bolster a portion of the squad. Some experts predict that the Bears will compete for one of the best athletic and defensive prospects available in the draft. It’s rumored that the Bears want to sign both Jalen Carter (DT, Georgia) and Will Anderosn Jr. (DE, Alabama).

For More Great Chicago Sports Content

Follow us on Twitter at @chicitysports23 for more great content. We appreciate you taking time to read our articles. To interact more with our community and keep up to date on the latest in Chicago sports news, JOIN OUR FREE FACEBOOK GROUP by CLICKING HERE

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