GLENDALE, Ariz.
Unless you are auditioning for a job, evaluating people who are or just happen to be a football geek, NFL exhibition games generally are numbing trivialities.
But there was a thrilling exception to this on Saturday at University of Phoenix Stadium, where the unfathomable return of Chiefs safety Eric Berry to action nine months after being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma brought meaning to the mundane.
That impact was evident even before Berry took the field on the fourth play from scrimmage.
You could read it in the tears falling down the weeping face of his mother, Carol, as she hugged him on the field … and as the typically stoic son appeared to be working to hold back from crying himself.