Big Talk After NFL Game: a Devastating Hit to the Head

The big chatter after Thursday night's game between the Packers and Bears wasn't about the national anthem, it was about a brutal hit to the head suffered by Green Bay's Davante Adams in the second half. The wide receiver was hospitalized, though "everything looks positive" after initial tests, says head coach Mike McCarthy, per Packers.com. Adams, who had movement in his extremities and flashed a thumbs-up as he left on a stretcher, took a helmet-to-helmet hit from Chicago's Danny Trevathan after catching a short pass. (You can see the hit here, or here in slow motion.) Trevathan got penalized for unnecessary roughness on the play, though the league is expected to dole out a tougher penalty, perhaps a suspension, this week. "It wasn't intentional," Trevathan said after the game, per the Chicago Tribune.

He added that he would try to reach out to Adams to make that clear. "I was just trying to hustle to the ball and do my job." At ESPN, Kevin Seifert writes that the hit was especially brutal because Adams was already being taken down by other Bears when Trevathan delivered it. The league put in a new rule during the offseason making "catastrophic" hits punishable by suspension, and Seifert thinks this one easily applies, calling it "an exceptionally dirty [hit], considering Adams was no longer making forward progress." Mark Maske of the Washington Post agrees, and is surprised Trevathan didn't get immediately ejected. As for the anthem, players, coaches, and staff from both teams stood and locked arms as it was performed. Home team Green Bay had asked fans to do the same, though the AP reports it didn't appear that many did. (More NFL stories.)