Leading Off: For the Chiefs, a Day of Sorrow and Inspiration From very far away, the Kansas City Chiefs' winning Sunday's game over Carolina in the wake of the unthinkable murder-suicide perpetrated by Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher could have been tied up with a little sports bow. In football's usual make-believe world, the kind often spun out of whole cloth by television types, the Chiefs rallied together, inspired one another, started to heal and move on and go ahead and fill in more of the clichés designed to make sports and athletes so heroic. But this, well, even the fake world was set back by this, overwhelmed with questions that had no answers. The Chiefs chose to soldier on and play, not out of any grand inspirational design but sometimes the only decision is to keep doing what you know until you can get a handle on what has happened. To keep inhaling and exhaling until there is strength to do more. There will be nothing but time for the other questions with no answers, including the big one that will not go away, highlighted by another concussion study released by Boston University researchers Monday: did Belcher's snapping have anything to do with his occupation? But first, there was the inhaling and exhaling. Playing Sunday's game might have seemed misguided, but the team captain Ryan Lilja explained it was "the least worst option." As Jeffri Chadiha writes on ESPN.com, the Chiefs chose to deal with the tragedy together, doing what they know, even as none of them could even pretend the game meant anything beyond that, writes Michael Silver on Yahoo.com. It was a chance to lose themselves in what they could make seem like a normal game, writes Tom Sorensen in The Charlotte Observer, to hold the real world at bay, even for just a while. Perhaps the only lasting thought that mattered was that while Romeo Crennel might not be a terribly good head coach, he is an admirable man. No one involved could do anything but marvel at how he not only didn't go to pieces after witnessing Belcher's suicide, but he also held the Chiefs together, his finest hour arising from his darkest moment, writes Sam Mellinger in The Kansas City Star. He didn't have any answers either, but that was kind of the point of the whole day, writes Bill Reiter on Foxsports.com. The best anyone could do was the best they could do. Sure, you could have opinions on whether the game should have gone on - Jason Whitlock on Foxsports.com believes it should not have - and even draw conclusions about the need for better gun control, as NBC's Bob Costas did at halftime. But even the noisiest opinions were muffled against a wall of grief. The rest of the N.F.L. had it awfully lucky, their games being played under only a corner of the shadow. In San Francisco, the 49ers fell off the perch marked unbeatable thanks to the Rams, with Coach Jim Harbaugh losing a little luster, writes Mark Purdy in The San Jose Mercury News, and his quarterback situation now looking a bit messy, writes Clark Judge on CBSSports.com. The Steelers got a soul-soothing win from the unlikely Charlie Batch, writes Les Carpenter on Yahoo.com, and made things a little more interesting in the playoff chase, writes John Clayton on ESPN.com. A lot of the playoff contenders find themselves in thornier spots, writes Don Banks on SI.com, including the Bears, who have too many things going wrong to feel the least bit comfortable, writes Rick Morrissey in The Chicago Sun-Times. The Jets, meanwhile, continue to dominate the news in the nonplayoff contender division by finally benching Mark Sanchez, but not for Tim Tebow (he's hurt), and doing it in the messiest way possible, Rich Cimini writes on ESPN.com. At least in the N.F.L., they are chasing real playoffs and not the faux version of the Bowl Championship Series. That bowl lineup was unveiled Sunday, with the expected matchup of Alabama and Notre Dame in the championship game all teed up to be fawned over - that trend was kicked off by Ivan Maisel of ESPN.com - even if they are two teams everyone loves to hate, writes Stewart Mandel on SI.com. Beyond that game, the lineup is a mess, writes Pat Forde on Yahoo.com, and somehow Northern Illinois squeezed in there to everyone's chagrin. Better yet, its head coach has been hired away, so the Huskies are being led on this wild little ride by a new coach, the promoted offensive coordinator Rod Carey. If only all the dramas in football involved only the machinations of football. Unfortunately, they involve so much more. Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt