As it turns out, Channing Crowder wasn't being entirely truthful when he said last week that he's retiring. It's more like an extended sabbatical. He plans to be back next year or the year after.
He is sitting out this year, though, because he didn't want to leave Miami and play somewhere else while his wife is pregnant, which is, of course, a perfectly good reason not to play football.
Via the Miami Herald, he talked Tuesday to Joe Rose of WQAM about his "retirement," Chad Henne and Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland.
On Henne:
"He's not impressing me," Crowder told Rose. "He has all the tangibles. He can make some good throws. But the intangibles, the winning the game, wanting to have everything on his shoulder like the [Tom] Bradys and [Peyton] Mannings and wanting to be down by five with a minute left on the 20-yard line, let's see what happens, he doesn't have that in his heart yet. And I think it'd be hard for him to win."
On Jeff Ireland:
"Every time I said something crazy, he called me upstairs," Crowder told the Joe Rose Show. "He fined me 5, 10 grand when I said something real crazy. I enjoy it. I think it's funny, to see people eat all that dumb stuff up. You make some stupid stuff up and they eat it up, you see it everywhere on the news. It's hilarious to me [ed. note: Glad we could amuse you!].
"But he'd call me in and then give me that one team, one voice, and worry about playing football. Me and him were never really on the same page, but I love Tony Sparano and that's who I really played for."
So yeah, in torching the quarterback on the way out the door, and not being completely appreciative of the GM, either, I'm guessing that the Dolphins' door is closed when Channing Crowder decides to make his comeback.
I wonder what other doors are closing, too. This seems like a risky strategy. The game is not always kind to guys who spend a lot of time away from it.
Crowder was just released because the team thought that the very non-spectacular Kevin Burnett was a significant upgrade. Now he's trashing the quarterback the second he's not on the team anymore, and I'm guessing other GMs will make a note of that. Then he also admits that he's going to spout crazy nonsense for his own amusement, even if the team's general manager doesn't like it.
I don't know. There's always another chance for a productive player, but I don't know if Crowder is so productive that after a year away from the game, teams are going to be willing to embrace his, um, uniqueness.
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