Bears fans seeking Burden updates rally around an Australian stranger

CBS Chicago follows a football search that became an outpouring of support for someone expressing suicidal thoughts.

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CBS Chicago Story of November 12, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 49,599 views a day, 25 times a normal first day on this channel (1,980).

Bears fans searching for Luther Burden updates, turns into uplifting show of support for X user

The Australian social media user did not even know who the Chicago Bears were, fan Jake Cooper tells CBS Chicago. Yet the team's supporters were about to fill their replies with encouragement.

Fans searching X for updates after wide receiver Luther Burden left Sunday's game against Tampa Bay encountered a distressed post about feeling like a burden. The person behind it was expressing suicidal thoughts.

In Marissa Sulek's report, Bears fan Chris Lobosco describes how supporters responded after a rude reply appeared: they challenged it, then sent positive messages of their own. The report shows some of those messages, an unexpected connection between a Chicago football community and a stranger in Australia.

Jonathan Singer, a Loyola University Chicago professor of social work, puts the message behind that support plainly: "Look, we don't know you, but by virtue of the fact that you exist on this planet, your life has value."

The report reached roughly 49,000 views in its first day, compared with about 2,000 for a usual CBS Chicago Short.

Sulek also includes an important distinction from Singer: people engaging with someone online are not responsible for saving that person's life. She closes the report by directing viewers who need support to call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States.

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