There’s a new buzz around the NFL, and it grew louder in front of a prime-time national television audience Thursday night at M&T Bank Stadium.

Ravens tight end Mark Andrews is likely out for the season after suffering an ankle injury in the first quarter of Baltimore’s 34-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. Linebacker Logan Wilson brought down the 2021 All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowl selection with a controversial hip-drop tackle, which is when a defender encircles a runner and drops his weight on the opponent’s knee or ankle to bring the player to the ground.

“When they do it, the runner becomes defenseless,” Rich McKay, chairman of the NFL’s competition committee, said during league meetings in October, adding that the play is a “cousin” of the horse-collar tackle, which was made illegal in 2005. “They can’t kick their way out from under. And that’s the problem. That’s where the injury occurs. You see the ankle get trapped underneath the weight of the defender.”

That’s what happened to Andrews when Wilson brought him to the ground on the Bengals’ 4-yard line less than four minutes into Thursday night’s AFC North matchup and landed on his left ankle.

Quarterback Lamar Jackson, who connected with Andrews on a short pass before the tight end turned upfield and raced toward the end zone, knew immediately that the injury was significant. Andrews stayed down writhing in pain and Jackson slammed his helmet in anguish.

“We’ve been bread and butter, peanut butter and jelly — whatever you want to call it,” said Jackson, who was drafted by the Ravens along with Andrews in 2018. “It’s very tough, because that’s my boy. That’s receiver [No.] 1 sometimes, and for him to go out [in the] first quarter … He’s been having a remarkable year.”

The hip-drop tackle has also been getting a lot of attention, this season and last.

Last month, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith injured his knee after New York Giants linebacker Isaiah Simmons landed on the back of his legs during a tackle. In January, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and two-time NFL Most Valuable Player Patrick Mahomes suffered a high ankle sprain during the divisional round of the playoffs when Jacksonville Jaguars linebacker Arden Key came down awkwardly on Mahomes’ right ankle. And in last season’s wild-card playoff game between the 49ers and Cowboys, Dallas running back Tony Pollard broke his leg and suffered a high ankle sprain while similarly being dragged down by San Francisco safety Jimmie Ward.

The NFL is gathering data and conducting a study on the hip-drop as it considers possibly banning it, with league executive Jeff Miller, who is in charge of overseeing player health and safety, saying in October that the tackle increases risk of injury by 25 times the rate of a regular tackle.

“It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” Miller said. “To quantify it for you, we see an injury more or less every week in the regular season on the hip-drop.”

That nearly included two more Ravens on tackles by Wilson.

Not long after Baltimore lost Andrews, Jackson injured his ankle as he scrambled toward the sideline and was dragged down from behind by the linebacker. The 2019 NFL MVP stayed down momentarily and trainers tended to him before he gave a thumbs-up and returned on the Ravens’ next possession without missing a play. Later, wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., landed awkwardly on his shoulder after Wilson tackled him from behind.

Neither were clear hip-drop tackles, though all eyes were on Wilson, who was not made available to the media after the game. Bengals coach Zac Taylor, meanwhile, said only that he didn’t “definitively” know what the tackle was when asked about the play involving Andrews.

“It was definitely a hip-drop tackle, and it is being discussed,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “It’s a tough tackle. Was it even necessary in that situation? The other one on the sideline … There are always plays you send into the league to have them look at and have them interpret for you.”

In the meantime, Baltimore will look to fill the massive void that Andrews’ injury leaves in the locker room and on the field.

Over the past six years, the 287 passes Andrews has caught from Jackson is 123 more than any other Ravens player. The 33 touchdowns the two have connected on also rank behind only Mahomes and Travis Kelce among quarterback-tight end combinations during that span.

It will be a team effort, Harbaugh said, but in terms of who will take over at tight end, that duty will go to Isaiah Likely. A fourth-round pick out of Coastal Carolina in 2022, he has just nine catches for 89 yards this season. Before Thursday’s game, he had been on the field for only 27.2% of the team’s offensive snaps.

He did flash during his rookie year, however, with four games of at least four catches, including in Week 17 against the Bengals when he had eight grabs for 103 yards while filling in for Andrews.

“It hurts,” Likely said of losing Andrews. “Mark is like a big brother in my eyes.

“I feel like I’m ready. I really just feel like me holding on to little details on how Lamar sees things, and then getting that same input on how Mark would have probably done it for him, and then just really trying to incorporate it into my game, and how I do things and going from there.”

Behind Likely is second-year tight end Charlie Kolar. A fourth-round pick out of Iowa State, he has played sparingly, however, appearing in 11 total games with five career catches for 62 yards. Fullback Patrick Ricard also has experience at tight end.

It’s also likely that Jackson will lean even more on his wide receivers.

Zay Flowers’ 53 catches and 588 yards this season are second and third, respectively, in the NFL among rookies and don’t include the 68-yard touchdown pass he had called back Thursday for a questionable holding penalty. Beckham, Rashod Bateman and Nelson Agholor are next in line with 24, 20 and 19 catches apiece.

Over the past three games, Beckham in particular has started to find a rhythm with Jackson, with 10 catches for 212 yards and two touchdowns in that span. That included 116 yards Thursday, the most he’s had in a game since Week 2 in 2019 with the Browns.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Beckham, who said his shoulder injury isn’t that bad. “Been a lot of hard work.

“Early on in the season, I was hurting. I couldn’t be myself. I didn’t have the explosion. I couldn’t move the way that I wanted to and I don’t think people really knew what I was dealing with.”

And now the Ravens (8-3) are going to have to figure out how to deal with not having Andrews the rest of the season.

Week 12

Ravens at Chargers

Sunday, Nov. 26, 8:20 p.m.

TV: NBC

Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM

Line: Ravens by 3 1/2

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Reed Abelson, The New York Times and Jordan Rau | KFF Health News (TNS)

Natasha Lazartes39, Brooklyn, New YorkTherapist

I am 39 years old. I had to care for my father, who passed from cancer in 2019; my mother, who passed in November 2021 from cancer; and since my mother’s passing, I have inherited the care of my grandmother. She is 97, diagnosed with moderate dementia, and considered high risk to be left home alone. We had been applying for Medicaid long-term care to receive a home health aide since early November 2021. She finally got a home health aide in January 2022, but it’s been a nightmare. They are so desperate to hire workers that they will take anyone. She was left without an aide on many random days with a late-notice telephone call or text message from the aide needing the day off and the agencies not able to find a replacement in time. I have changed agencies multiple times. My husband has been a great support the entire time. We rely on security cameras we installed in our apartment to see how she is doing while we are at work. How is it on a daily basis? It is emotionally and physically draining. The health care system for the elderly is neglected, broken, and inadequate to meet any demands, even the basic needs.

Natasha Lazartes with her mother, Carmen Torres, and husband, Jonathan Youngman, at her home in Brooklyn, New York. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times/KFF Health News/TNS)

Robert Ingenito44, Mamaroneck, New YorkPublic information officer

My father, who is now 93, had me late in life, at age 49. My mother died from cancer when I was 19. Literally on her deathbed, she said to me, “Don’t put your father in a nursing home.” Now, at 44, I’m married, I have a 6-year-old daughter, and for the past five years my dad has lived with us. I work about 20 hours a week, which allowed me to do something other than being his caregiver. If I had to put a price tag on the quality of care I provided to my dad, it would probably be the equivalent of a high-end assisted living facility. But it was becoming really hard for myself, my wife, and our daughter. His level of care was getting to the point of something I just could not sustain. He couldn’t be left alone. I wasn’t getting any sleep. Recently, I made the extremely difficult decision to move him into an assisted living facility. Fortunately, he has the financial resources to do that. For most people, that’s not even an option. I have been happy with the level of care that he’s getting, but when I signed the lease, I felt like I was breaking my promise. I tried my best to follow my mom’s wishes. But there’s only so much I could do, and I had to do it.

Karina Ortega43, DallasCaregiver

My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in March 2020, but even before then, I knew something was wrong. One day, she went to visit a family friend and was going to donate some clothes to her. Seven hours later, we still hadn’t heard from her. She got lost. Eventually she found a supermarket that was familiar to her and got home. I’m no longer working at all. This has all taken a toll on my life. I do have a younger brother and an older sister, but my sister has a daughter in college and my brother has a 7-year-old. I’m the only one with no children and have always been the one who would take care of my parents. If Mom gets worse and I can’t care for her? That’s something I struggle with. Putting her in a home? In our culture, that’s looked down upon. I was a rebellious teen, and she never gave up on me, so how am I going to give up on her? I just can’t see it in me to leave my mom because she needs me.

Gay Glenn looks out the window of the home she is staying in, which belonged to her mother, Betty Mae Glenn, in Topeka, Kansas, on Feb. 24, 2023. (Arin Yoon/The New York Times/KFF Health News/TNS)

Gay Glenn61, Topeka, KansasActor

It was costing us $8,000 out-of-pocket to have people come into my mom’s house to help her, and that was only eight hours a day. I’m watching her savings just dwindle. And then she fell. And then she fell again overnight. At the hospital, they found she had a cracked sacrum. She was in rehab for the maximum number of days that Medicare will cover and couldn’t return home. Because she owned a house, had two rentals, savings, and two cars, she had to pay long-term care costs out of her pocket. I think my mom had about $18,000 in the bank. She had five life insurance policies in her children’s names. We cashed out the policies. In one year, she had to pay $65,000 for her care at the nursing home and spend down an additional $37,000 to be able to be eligible for Medicaid. We just sold her house. She passed in October. The state says we still owe close to $20,000 for the year Medicaid paid for her nursing home. I moved here in February of 2019. I certainly didn’t expect to be here going on five years. It was awful — personally all the time and energy and money to do this for her — and it was great. I was able to protect her and make sure everything was OK for her. I said at the memorial service that my mom was there when I took my first breath, and I was there when she took her last. If that’s not the circle of life, I don’t know what is.

Bryan Ness62, Angwin, CaliforniaBiology professor

We had it all planned. My mom was going to live with us. She has some cognitive issues from the stroke. All of her long-term memory is just fine. Her short-term memory is just nonexistent. We looked at what it would cost for home care. Even if we limited it to just eight hours a day, it’s more expensive than the assisted living place that’s 10 minutes from our house. It’s a wonderful little place. It’s $4,500 a month. That’s still a lot. She’s run out of her own money. There’s no more than the $1,500 she gets from Social Security. We talked to the place and got it down to $4,000. I got really good responses from GoFundMe. A lot of my former students and friends put in some chunks. I hate begging for money. My wife and I are at least at the age where we don’t have kids we’re supporting anymore. But we’re concerned we are going to hurt our own retirement savings. My wife is already 65. We need to keep our retirement plan going, too. They told us: Don’t ruin your own retirement over this. Well, agreed, but we’ve got to take care of my mom, too. We have a relative who’s giving $500 a month. I’m going to take on some extra work to cover the costs. I felt my career could wind down over the next few years, and now I’ve got an $1,800 bill added to my finances from now until whenever.

Stacey Wheeler60, Greenville, South CarolinaRetiree

My mom was in independent living. I had someone coming in the morning to get her up. Nobody is getting paid enough to say: “Now, come on, you really want to get dressed. Let’s pick out some earrings.” I should have tried 20 people in hopes of finding one who did that. No one is going to waste time with an old person who doesn’t want to do what they don’t want to do. It’s hard to care about grumpy people when you’re barely putting food on the table. My mom got sick and then needed to be in a wheelchair in assisted living. When she sold her condo, she had about $2,500 a month in retirement and she had about $120,000 in the bank. That starts going fast when you hit $7,000 or $8,000 a month. Everyone’s so worried about being sued by people that every time something happened, they wanted her to go to the ER. I wish I had known that no one was going to help me. I would have kept her in independent living and gone through hiring people until I found one. My husband and I were both retired, fortunately. We couldn’t leave town. We tried twice and had to come back. Ironically, the last place she was in, because she was going to run out of money, was the best place. The room wasn’t as big, but the staff were the best there. Mom died in August 2022.

Jeanette Landin sits where she used to sit with her mother at her home in Brattleboro, Vermont. (Kelly Burgess/The New York Times/KFF Health News/TNS)

Jeanette Landin55, Brattleboro, VermontAssociate professor

There were wildfires where my mother lived out in California that were getting very close and were causing her health problems. Between that and a series of in-home falls and her inability to drive herself to different places, she finally called in November of 2017 and said, “I think I need to come live with you.” We found a house that would be adequate for both my family and her needs. Her dementia started to get worse. We looked at adult day care and found a local place. It was tremendously expensive to do that. But they were good until they got to a point where they contacted me and said she’s not following directions, she’s refusing to do appropriate hygiene. This was early 2022, and we had to pull her out of that service. In early April, she started getting violent and would threaten my husband that she was going to kill him by chopping his head off. And then she would tell me she was going to kill my daughters. One night I had her taken to the hospital and they found she had been in kidney failure. She was still very violent. They looked at placement in a nursing home. Because of the fact she was violent, she couldn’t be placed anywhere. They had to send her home with us, and we had to keep her chemically sedated. From the time she came home till the time she died, it was seven days. We kept our daughters from coming upstairs. We didn’t want them hearing and seeing what was happening because it’s not something I would wish anybody to ever go through. It was awful.

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The loud speakers blared once the Saints’ Hail Mary pass attempt fell harmlessly to the turf. The song choice was obvious for anybody who has been paying attention.

As the Vikings celebrated their fifth straight win last weekend, defeating New Orleans at home, the power vocals of the rock band Creed echoed throughout U.S. Bank Stadium.

The vibes were immaculate with the late 1990’s smash hit “Higher” serving as the soundtrack of the moment. Then the audio strategically cut out with the song approaching its chorus.

Naturally, a large portion of the 66,933 fans in attendance took over for lead singer Scott Stapp, shouting every word in unison.

Can you take me higher?
To a place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To a place with golden streets

“That was awesome,” Vikings center Garrett Bradbury said. “The whole crowd was singing it.”

How did this happen? How did a 24-year-old song somehow become synonymous with the Vikings?

It started about a month and a half ago when the Vikings played it before a win over the Bears in Chicago. Usually, linebacker Brian Asamoah is the keeper of the aux cord, meaning he’s in charge of getting the Vikings hyped up before they take the field.

“I embrace it,” Asamoah said. “I’ve been the DJ everywhere I’ve gone.”

Though he has a number of curated playlists designed for pregame, Asamoah isn’t too proud to take requests. He knows it comes with the territory of being the DJ in the locker room. Thus, Asamoah obliged when Bradbury asked him to play Creed, even if he had no idea who the rock band was at the time.

“I played it and everybody was turning up,” Asamoah said. “We ran out there and won the game and never looked back.”

The first reference to Creed came from franchise quarterback Kirk Cousins after the Vikings beat the Bears. He went out of his way to mention that “Higher” was playing in the locker room before the game. He joked that it might have made the difference.

“We thought we’d mix up the genre a little bit,” Cousins said. “Get some Creed in there. It was Garrett who made sure it happened. It was well received.”

It picked up some steam the following week as the Vikings played it again before a Monday night win over the 49ers at home. The recognizable guitar chords hit pregame while Cousins was getting his ankles taped, with Bradbury doing some bodywork alongside him to get loose.

“He goes, ‘I’ve got to go enjoy this with the boys.’ ” Cousins said of Bradbury. “He gets up and goes in the locker room.”

The song continued to play while a group of players gathered for their weekly prayer before the game. As they went to turn off the music, veteran safety Harrison Smith offered a counterpoint regarding the song and its chorus.

Can you take me higher?
To a place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To a place with golden streets

“He said, ‘Guys, this is the prayer,’ ” Cousins said with a laugh. “I thought, ‘That’s pretty good.’ ”

Not everybody on the Vikings was privy to the rock band before it organically became a part of this season.

“The only Creed I knew was the boxing movie,” star receiver Justin Jefferson said. “I did not know about no Creed until Kirk started playing it in the locker room.”

It was a similar reaction from journeyman quarterback Josh Dobbs after he arrived from Arizona at the trade deadline He remembers hearing it before the Vikings played the Falcons in Atlanta

“I was in the locker room before the game and somebody’s like, “Turn on Creed!’ ” Dobbs said. “Obviously, it’s a little bit different than the typical locker room pregame.”

He proved to be a quick study. After leading the Vikings to an improbable win that day in Atlanta, Dobbs posted a hilarious video on TikTok to thank the fan base for the warm welcome. The backing track? None other than Creed.

“I had to get up to speed on it all,” Dobbs said. “I’m taking it and running with it.”

So are the Vikings as a whole.

“It’s kind of becoming an anthem,” tight end T.J. Hockenson said. “It gets us ready to go. It’s funny how that works. All the guys get amped when they hear it.”

It’s only right that Cousins has remained a part of the narrative despite suffering a torn Achilles tendon that will force him to miss the rest of the season. Ask anybody in the locker room and they will immediately credit Cousins with starting the movement. Fittingly, he was spotted at TCO Performance Center this week, wheeling around on his scooter, wearing a shirt with an image of the rock band plastered on the back.

There’s absolutely no doubt the Vikings will blast Creed before they play the Broncos on Sunday night in Denver. They are a perfect 5-0 since “Higher” made its way into the locker room about a month and a half ago. It’s become an unspoken thing at this point.

“It’s every game now,” Asamoah said. “They look at me like, ‘You know what to do.’ ”

He pushes play, and 1 minute, 14 seconds later, the chorus plays.

Can you take me higher?
To a place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To a place with golden streets

“I didn’t even know the words like a month ago when we first started playing it,” left tackle Christian Darrisaw said. “Now I do. We’re embracing it. We know before we all go out there on that field, we’re going to listen to some Creed.”

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