MINNEAPOLIS -- As reporters, we don't typically allow ourselves to get sucked into a story and we try to keep our emotions in check. Doing so with the Ryan Shazier injury, however, has been tough.
While I won't pretend we're best buddies, we've talked at length on numerous occasions. Seeing him lying motionless on the turf at Paul Brown Stadium Dec. 4 left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. Seeing him at the Rooney Sports Complex in the following weeks in a wheelchair did nothing to take that away.
I had resigned myself to believing, nearly two months into this thing, the possibility was not only real, it was probably reality, that Shazier might never walk again.
I believed that until Thursday.
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