Chris Hairston has been hit hard before on a football field.
No blow compares to the one he absorbed last week.
It was not a linebacker or defensive tackle who delivered it, not a shoulder pad or helmet that rocked him. It was news from near his North Carolina hometown, word that another black man was reduced to a social-media hashtag. Keith Lamont Smith, 43, was fatally shot last Tuesday by a Charlotte police officer.
Hairston, a Winston-Salem native, was affected.
For days, he read and watched whatever articles and videos he could find.