Former Lions quarterback Scott Mitchell now believes that the bizarre boast from his old teammate Lomas Brown about purposely missing a block to get him hurt was nothing more than an attempt to get attention for himself as an analyst at ESPN.
Mitchell told the Detroit News that he thinks Brown’s whole story about allowing Packers defensive end Sean Jones to take a free shot at him was untrue.
“I do think he did it to improve his position with ESPN,” Mitchell said. “That is probably the dumbest thing to do — to tell a story that isn’t true. It is an error in judgment and kind of stupid actually. I don’t think Lomas purposely tried to get me hurt.”
Brown’s story definitely wasn’t completely accurate: When Brown first made his claim on ESPN Radio, he got some details wrong, like the score and the time of the game when Mitchell was injured. Brown has since claimed that his memory was faulty and that the play he was remembering wasn’t the same play when Mitchell got hurt, although Brown still says there was a play when he purposely missed a block because he wanted Jones to injure Mitchell.
Despite that, Mitchell says Brown apologized and Mitchell accepted the apology, adding, “I have no malice towards Lomas.”