Rozner: Long journey only beginning for ex-Bears lineman

Time is the ultimate anchor, setting forth into the depths and darkness to first slow and then finally stop us.

It is often seen as the enemy, when it's really our own decisions that let it get away, wasted on ego that desires, bleeding a clock that hounds.

The longer you fight it, the more the years fly by.

In this regard, Kyle Long - at the ripe old age of 31 - decided he could no longer engage an adversary that was gaining the upper hand.

He could no more fight it than a battered body that has screamed at him to stop destroying it before it turns on him permanently.

No doubt he has done enough damage the last 10 years to ensure difficulties later, but recognizing it now perhaps gives him a fair chance to heal.

And play some golf - among many other hobbies and interests.

We had a long conversation about golf early in the 2019 football season, his ability to crush a 3-iron farther than most humans can hit a driver, and he was keen on his short-game improvement.

Such optimism should not be put on hold.

There was no sense at the time that he was pondering retirement, but how many injuries are enough? How many times can you rehab the same limbs? How many times is it worth those lonely hours learning to walk or lift your arms again?

Given all he's been through and after an early exit in 2019, it wasn't surprising that Long announced on Twitter a few days ago that he was stepping away from the Bears and football.

Officially it was a hip injury that derailed him five games into the season, but more likely it was the Bears believing that Long could no longer get it done, his brain and effort still knowing the path but the rest of him refusing to keep pace.

Seven years of NFL football are the rough equivalent of 30 years playing in traffic on the Kennedy without an automobile.

Laud the man who knows when enough is enough.

Not all will remember that when healthy Long was an offensive line animal, dominant on the inside and capable of pancaking anyone.

He was also a great leader and teammate, respected in the locker room and on the field, almost always knowing the right thing to say.

Playing on some terrible teams with some awful teammates, saddled with wretched quarterbacks and dreadful play callers who refused to run the football, Long nevertheless defended them all.

The son of a Hall of Famer, he understood protocol.

Late in 2013, near the end of his rookie season when the Bears went from 3-0 to 8-8 under Marc Trestman, Long said, "At Oregon, I was spoiled. We could go out every week and put up 50 points. It was a blessing, but also it took some getting used to here (in Chicago)."

At the end of 2014 as the Trestman experiment was imploding, Long said with a smile, "It has been quite an emotional roller coaster. That's the humbling thing about the NFL."

His unselfishness wasn't always recognized, but never did he complain when a week before the 2015 season he was asked to shift from right guard to right tackle.

He began that season unable to tie his own shoes, a mangled right hand encased in a combination of cast, catcher's mitt and garden trowel.

"It's an extremity issue," Long laughed. "Nothing to worry about."

Another losing season in 2015 left him exhausted, and he wasn't laughing anymore.

"I'm pretty tired of losing. I can tell you that much," Long said. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

He played all but one game of his first three seasons before injuries took him apart.

Over the next three years he started just 25 games, suffering - and often playing through - shoulder, ankle, neck, elbow and hand injuries, and ultimately he had surgeries on his neck, shoulder, ankle and elbow.

"The new normal is dealing with some things and that comes with playing the game and playing hard," Long said early in 2018. "I've been lucky enough to play offensive line, the greatest position in football and along with that comes some bumps and bruises."

Another bruise cost him half that season, but he returned in 2018 in time for the final regular season game and the playoff loss to Philadelphia.

"If you're talking about 24-year-old Kyle, yeah, I used to just put my gloves on and cleats on, not tape anything, just go out and try to beat people up," Long said. "You ask anyone who's six years in and it's different, but I have to get used to that."

After the playoff defeat, his only career postseason game, he confessed to being less than sharp, but was pleased to walk off the field on his own.

"Luckily, there's no warning lights going off right now," Long smirked. "Take inventory and figure it out, but I feel better now than I did coming out of last season.

"Once the dust settles, you get an idea of what you're working with going into the next year."

Turns out, there wasn't much left to work with, the understandable result of a vicious sport that treats even the toughest like road kill.

Many Bears fans will remember that, the offensive lineman struggling to do his job, instead of a man who never quit on his team, even when his body quit on him.

Rare is the athlete worth remembering, the one who passes through town without a Hall of Fame performance, yet someone worth admiring, not always for greatness but for how such an athlete behaved on and off the field, and for a desire to keep battling regardless of pain or score.

Kyle Long was one such oasis in a frequently deserted Bears locker room.

He has done all he can. His body has made a choice. Time now to heal up.

And live.