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The NFL knows where its bread is buttered. That league goes out of its way to protect quarterbacks, to the point where some 300-pound D-linemen are pulling up rather than risk a roughing-the-passer penalty.

No one wants to turn the game into flag football. But if the injury trend continues, it isn’t going to be a lot of fun this summer watching kids and third stringers try to move yardsticks. (The anomaly: every rookie wants the CFL debut Rakeem Cato had for the Als Saturday, beating the Grey Cup-champion Stampeders 29-11).

What timing – oft-injured Lions quarterback Travis Lulay returns to the scene (TD Place at Lansdowne) of his season-ending shoulder injury suffered in early September against the Redblacks. God knows if Lulay can get through a whole game Saturday.

“It’s crazy,” Burris says. “I thought this year, we’d get some sort of break after all the injuries last year. I think every quarterback across the league got dinged up last year. It seems like it’s back on course now.”

In 2014, the then-39-year-old Burris was outspoken at times, believing he was being targeted by dangerous hits. Away from the heat of a game, he says that all quarterbacks are targets, ’twas ever thus.

“That’s their job, to try to get the quarterback out of the game,” Burris says. “The league is doing a good job. That hit (Thursday) night was unavoidable. People say it was a head shot. But honestly, when a guy is getting spun around, and all of a sudden a head drops into another head, you can’t say he was trying to take a shot at the guy.”