You can see it in his gingerly gate as he moves from his locker to the shower area, in the way he leans against a wall to take pressure off his right knee.
Haloti Ngata's remarkable body hurts.
This is easy enough to forget when you watch the Ravens on Sundays. The television announcers are more apt to talk about Terrell Suggs' Achilles or Ray Lewis' triceps. The camera, always following the ball, rarely settles on the trench warfare between Ngata and two or three offensive linemen nearly as big and powerful as he.
His teammates know. Always in awe of his combined size, power and agility, they now speak in appreciative tones of the way Ngata has played through a sprained knee and a busted shoulder, never saying much about either. That's the way he learned from his Tongan forefathers — go to work every day, and if you're in pain, still go.
But this season — his seventh overall and the second straight in which he's played through debilitating pain — the Ravens defensive tackle has thought more about his football mortality than ever before. Maybe it's the joy he gets from chasing his 3-year-old and five-month-old sons. Maybe it's the suicide of Junior Seau, a hero to Ngata and many other players of Polynesian descent.
"It makes you think, especially now that I have kids, is this job worth the head traumas you're probably going to end up having when you're older?" he says in the hushed voice that belies his enormous body. "I just think about being able to raise my kids, see them through college, see them have kids. It makes me think more about how much more I want to play."
