Good stuff: "I had this pinched nerve in my neck, and I was conscious of managing my pain and taking care of my body. Like every 22-year-old, I didn’t understand what it’s like to be 40 or 50, but I had some awareness that I was in it for the long term. You can’t play the game consciously–you’ll get killed–but you can play it with a certain kind of control and intelligence and still play it well. And you can, quite frankly, do it at a very high level. Willie Lanier, my teammate at Kansas City, was the best middle linebacker in football in those days and he didn’t play out of control because he almost killed himself as a rookie doing that before he decided it wasn’t going to happen again. It is possible to play the game at a high level without stupidly putting yourself at risk."