Bears receiver Sam Hurd allegedly is a real-life Heisenberg. His coach is determined to prevent the situation from turning the team’s season into the Hindenburg.
Lovie Smith, who first found out about Hurd’s arrest when Hurd didn’t show up for work today, intends to prevent the perp walk from affecting the ongoing playoff run. “A lot’s going on,” Smith said, via Sean Jensen of the Chicago Sun-Times. “We don’t need any distractions, and we can’t let it become that.”
So what effect has the latest legal story to take the league by storm had on the Bears? “It was business as usual around here,” Smith said. “A typical Thursday practice for us. We will not let this become a distraction for us.”
But Smith’s comments drip with delusion. He says he’s confident that no other players are involved -- presumably as confident as he would have been on Wednesday that Hurd wouldn’t be involved. “I know that anyone we bring through here, we’ve had an extensive search, to find out if there’s something out there,” Smith said.
Apparently, that “extensive search” wasn’t performed on Hurd.
On one hand, Smith has no choice but to try to downplay the mess that has popped up out of nowhere. On the other hand, Smith needs to be realistic -- and a minimum guarded -- about his comments before he makes a sweeping comment that will make him appear to be even more out of touch with his players than he was with Hurd.
Hurd reportedly supplied more than 10 players with drugs. For now, no one knows -- including Smith -- whether any other Bears are on that list.