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For the past couple weeks, the local sports media had been increasingly vocal on Brian Urlacher's lack of accessibility with reporters, and his lack of words when he did talk.
He finally opened up over the weekend to Fox Sport's Jay Glazer, and he dropped a bombshell.
In an interview with Glazer — who will also be handling a weekly Q&A session with Urlacher for the Bears' linebacker's new FoxSports blog — Urlacher said he's been quiet with the press because he's been trying to hide a serious back injury:
... I decided to open up about this because the media didn't like my answers and started saying I was doing a disservice to the fans. ... I just don't want to talk about an injury where there are no answers. But when the media throws the fan angle in, I'm talking. That's what I'm doing now. Don't use the fan excuse with me.
Confirming that he has an arthritic condition in his back, he said that he's frustrated because there's little that can be done:
We've done X-rays, bone scans, MRIs, CAT scans and this week I flew to Pittsburgh and met with a specialist. He confirmed what the team told me, that they think it's an arthritis type of thing. The thing that's so frustrating is there is no clear-cut solution to give me relief. I just have to deal with the pain.
Now that Brian's finally spilled the beans about his bad back, can we expect his new blog to be all about his back, all the time? Will anybody want to know about anything else for the rest of the season?
Image via ThinkGeek.
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And to make it better, Lovie, in his press conference yesterday, acted as if nothing was wrong, giving the old "everyone plays with pain" cliche. Well, there's a difference between everyday soreness and a potentially degenerative arthritic condition which prevents your all-pro linebacker from playing at an all-pro level.
And the season from Hell continues...
I have to imagine that this type of injury will cut his career short.
Yeah, I don't quite get Lovie's continued denials at this point. I know a lot of teams don't like to advertise their stars' injuries for fear of giving opponents an upper hand in developing their gameplans, but once Urlacher comes out and discloses everything... well there's really nothing left to hide.