By Sal Maiorana
Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Why is it that Buffalo Bills running back Travis Henry insists on playing with a cracked fibula in his right leg?

Why is it that quarterback Drew Bledsoe, knowing the obvious dangers associated with recurring concussions, insists on playing after getting his bell rung in consecutive weeks?

Why is that wide receiver Eric Moulds insists on playing even though his injured groin is so sore that it might be tough for him to beat super-sized Sam Adams in a foot race?

Because that's what NFL players do. They ignore the pain and they play.

"You don't take a week off, this is football, you play," said Bledsoe. "If I'm able to play, I'm going to play and that's the way I'm going to be until I quit playing the game."

There may not be any crying in baseball, as actor Tom Hanks once said in the movie "A League of Their Own", but as New York Jets coach Herman Edwards opined last week, "There's no sissies playing football."

How many baseball players bend a finger the wrong way and beg out of the starting lineup for a day or two? Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott bent a finger the wrong way one time and he told the doctor to just cut the tip off so he could get back onto the field and play.

"It's part of the game," Bledsoe said. "You play this game, you're going to get knocked around, you're going to get hurt."

It is the starkest of realities in the violent and sometimes barbaric world of professional football, the one thing that separates the sport from just about every other: Pain. More specifically, playing with pain.

In the NFL, pain is a players' constant companion. Like a callous on a blacksmith's hand, or that annoying Orbitz pop-up ad on the internet, it never goes away.

"The only guys who aren't in pain are the guys on the bench," said Edwards, who played 10 years with the Philadelphia Eagles before becoming a coach.

"When you play, you know you're never going to be as well as before you started playing. Something is going to be wrong with you."

Yet pain rarely stops these men.

Why?

There are a number of reasons.

•  Responsibility.

"We have to feed our families," Adams said. "And there are hundreds of guys out there who want to play, guys who want my job, and if I don't go out there and earn it every day whether I'm hurt or not, someone else is going to take it. You do what you can to keep your job."

•  Peer pressure.

"I think bigger than anything is the peer pressure," said Bills tight end Mark Campbell, who takes a pain-killing injection every Sunday to dull the constant ache in his right elbow which will need off-season surgery. "You don't want to let your teammates down. When you're not playing, you feel bad, like you're letting the team down."

•  The tough-guy mentality.

"To a certain extent many of these guys think they have an 'S' on their chest and you almost have to believe that you're kind of super human to be able to excel in a contact sport like this," Bills coach Gregg Williams said.

•  Pride.

"There were times on Saturday when I said 'Boy, I don't know if I can do this,' " Edwards said. "But when the adrenaline hits after that meeting - and I had Dick Vermeil so he could get you fired up in that meeting - you felt obligated to your teammates to go out and win a game. That's how I felt and that's how I think players feel now."

•  Being a good teammate.

"We play for each other," center Trey Teague said. "We see someone going out there (playing hurt), going through something like that, and it makes you want to go out there. You kind of feel like those guys have got your back and you've got theirs. That's the reason guys fight through injuries, because of their teammates."

All of these factors are driven into football players' minds from the outset.

At an age when their little heads are swimming in their helmets, kids learn to catch, learn to throw, learn to block and learn to tackle. And none of that even matters unless they learn to deal with pain because if they can't take the pain, it might be time to take up basketball or baseball.

"If you're going to get hit one time and head for the sidelines, the game's not for you," Bledsoe said.

Bledsoe remembers growing up in Washington and playing youth football, and while he was never forced to play when he was hurt, he came to recognize pretty quickly that that's what you do in football.

"I didn't have coaches when I was first starting out saying 'Get back in there, you're fine, go play with that broken arm' or whatever," he said with a laugh. "It wasn't a scenario like that. But I just think it's understood that if you play football, guys get hurt and you keep playing."

Times have certainly changed for the better in the NFL.

Players are in far better shape than their predecessors as they treat their bodies like temples. They eat right, they exercise, they lift weights, they are safer on the field thanks to advances in equipment, and doctors and trainers are better equipped to deal with their health problems.

However, two things haven't changed about the game. No. 1, pain is pain and when it hurts, it hurts. No. 2, unless it is impossible to play, players are going to play, regardless of the pain.

"That's the thing that I marvel the most at," said Williams. "Being able to coach at this level, I'm amazed at the ability some of these guys have to make plays, but I'm more amazed with their body's ability to respond and play week after week.

"These are tough guys, and anybody who says that they're not, stand down there on the sideline and hear what goes on and see it."

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