Safety Injuries: Hardin Leaves Hospital, Conte Wearing Sling

One of the goals of the preseason for any team, much less the Bears, is to make it through without suffering significant injuries. Five players left Saturday night's game with some sort of injury, including safeties Chris Conte and Brandon Hardin.

Conte left with a right shoulder injury and left Soldier Field wearing a sling, which of course Lovie Smith said isn't serious.

Hardin's injury might be a little more serious, even though he left the hospital today after clearing all his major tests. He injured his neck making a head-first tackle into the center of mass of large tight end Logan Paulsen, which almost always spells immediate bad news as he left immobilized on a stretcher. He never lost consciousness not any movement in his extremities, particularly noticeable when he tweeted:

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I can't give an exact update, but the good news is that I'm gonna be ok. And we won! Lol

All that's well and good, but the other news about his injury is that he'll be undergoing more tests in two weeks to determine when he can see the field again, which of course means he'll be out until then.

So the safety injuries might prompt the team to keep Anthony Walters or another defensive back around in the early going if they expect Conte or Hardin to miss any significant time, and if that's the case with Hardin (since after all, Conte's injury isn't serious, right, Lovie?), if the team needs the roster spot badly enough, there's your IR red-shirt candidate.

In other injury news, Adam Podlesh strained a hip flexor, but said he should be fine; Blake Costanzo also left with cramps. And Corey Wootton tweaked his groin on, once again, a kickoff cover - a shame, because he's played well this camp and looked like he had started to turn a corner. Then of course there's Stephen Paea and Brian Urlacher.

The injuries may not all be serious, but are you concerned at how many injuries they've taken thus far?