Lions’ Carrier Is Suspended

Detroit Lion safety Mark Carrier, whose helmet-to-helmet hit gave Tampa Bay’s Brice Hunter a concussion, was suspended for one game by the NFL on Wednesday.

This is the league’s first suspension for an on-field hit since 1992, when Green Bay’s LeRoy Butler was suspended one game for throwing a forearm to the head of Detroit quarterback Andre Ware.

The suspension will cost Carrier about $25,000, or one week of his base salary of $475,000.

George Young, the league’s senior vice president for football operations, called the latest hit “unnecessary, dangerous and something we do not want in the game.”

“It is a tackling technique that poses a significant injury risk both to the player and his opponent,” he said.

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Bobby Hoying will start over Rodney Peete for the winless Philadelphia Eagles in Denver, Coach Ray Rhodes said.

The Eagles have lost seven in a row dating to last season, six of them with Hoying, whom the Eagles hope is their quarterback of the future. He started the last six games last season after Ty Detmer and Peete, both veterans, had shared the starting job for the first 10 games.

Rhodes declined to say why he made the change to Hoying.

“I’m not going to make that an issue going into this game,” Rhodes said. “We’re playing Denver. I want to talk about the Denver Broncos. We just want to get focused as much as we can on trying to win a game.”

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Chicago Bear safety John Mangum has been forced into retirement because of a series of concussions, the last coming Sept. 20 in a game against Tampa Bay. The Bears also lost cornerback Tom Carter for the season. Carter broke his collarbone in Sunday’s loss to Minnesota. . . . Two weeks after being reinstated from a 21-day suspension for conduct detrimental to the team, Jamie Brown was named San Francisco’s starter at left tackle in place of injured Dave Fiore.