The Injury Bug Strikes First Victim
If you'll remember all the way back to our Browns preview, we placed a lot of the Browns potential success for the upcoming year on their offensive line, a unit they were dead-set on improving this offseason. So what do the NFL gods reward the Browns with? The first (potentially) season-ending injury of the year! And on the second day of training camp, no less. The victim -- LeCharles Bentley, the former Saints center the Brownies brought in for the cheap price of a little over $7M a year and $12.5M in guaranteed money. Bentley screamed "No!" upon being injured (never a good sign), and waited on the ground until help came. The rumor is a ruptured patella tendon, which would end his season. Bentley was the top-rated player of free agency and one of the Browns' two major additions to the offseason, joining Kevin Schaffer.
It's a case of bad karma for Bentley, who walked away from New Orleans last season and said some pretty nasty things on the way out including, I would rather sit out a season than play for the Saints again. Someone make sure to ask Bentley if he still feels that way, since that quote has proved to be prophetic. Needless to say, I don't feel pity -- you get what you give, Bents. Of course, the Browns still have talented backup center and former first round pick Jeff Faine...oh wait! No they don't! They traded him TO THE SAINTS at the draft. No disrespect to the Browns, who I thought had a very promising year ahead of them and who I feel bad for. They're just an innocent bystander in this. That trickle sound you hear is the urine running down Charlie Frye's leg.
UPDATE: Check out God Hates Cleveland Sports for the emotional reaction to this car-wreck. There's an odd sense of unsurprised resignation over there. Saints fans and Browns fans, we're not so different after all.
