Written by Mansfield Lucas

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Great piece from Manfield here. In it, he take serious exception to the deception displayed by Browns GM Phil Savage as it related to the recent surgery Kellen Winslow II just underwent. Glossed over as a minor scope by Phil, it turns out they were drilling holes in our boy KW2's leg bone. A surgery that carries with it a 25% chance of never playing tackle ball again. Yet ... you'd never know any of this by the way Phil talked about it.

Once again, about this Savage guy …

Cats and chinchillas, it does look like I have a hate on for Phil. Seems like every take I have is just one of poppin’ in the banana clip and holding the hammer down on my AK at Opie while my boi Swerb drives slow like Paul Wall so I can pop caps at this busta with a mind as clear as a Brahman. But no, I’m not the Bhodi of malice. It just seems that way. For the millionth time, I don’t want Phil gone.

But the Souljah’s micro-fracture surgery and how you spun it? Phil, I’m just sayin’.

You have the only true playa on the team who is pro bowl worthy, league-leading good – I don’t mean potentially good like Kam-Rahn or Attitude, or maybe even Bodden - and he is undergoing career threatening surgery.

Crickets chirp and we’re told at Phil’s presser, if I recall correctly, that KW2 had some scope surgery.

If you are obsessive enough to come to a site like this, odds are really good you know what micro-fracture surgery is. But why chance it? In short, given my stay at a Holiday Inn Express last fall, I believe I can say with accuracy that micro-fracture knee surgery involves drilling extremely small holes into the leg bone (the technical anatomical term) next to the knee bone where there’s no cartilage left from prior surgery. The blood is supposed to clot or somethin’ like Bill’s Jello ™ pudding and if all goes well, you get some crap in there that acts like cartilage for a while. But hey, why take my word for it when the 21^st Century Authority can tell you all you kneed to know. The good news is there is a 75 – 80% chance of a full recovery. The bad news is there is a 20 – 25% chance of failure. And despite our recent karma busting coin flip, I’m not in love with our odds.

But that’s not the point.

In this day and age, a “knee scope” is akin to reading about an illegitimate child from a pro athlete, or TO being a douche bag, or the media genuflecting to Ray Lewis, or a Bengal arrested. It happens everyday. A micro-fracture surgery is usually the operation of last resort before retirement; it’s like a free agent player taking less money to stay with a team. It is a huge deal. When it happens to your only good player, it is news.

So here’s the point: does Phil owe it to us to tell it to us straight and not give misleading information? I write “misleading” because the term “lying” implies intent.

If I have my facts right via Pat Mac, quickly echoed by Jeff Schudel and others, the procedure was done on January 30^th. Here’s the Browns’ release from the Officialest of $ites:

Winslow has successful surgery

01.30.2007

Cleveland Browns TE Kellen Winslow underwent a right knee arthroscopy today at the Cleveland Clinic to remove scar tissue and repair some cartilage damage.

Winslow has been released and is expected to make a full recovery. The surgery was performed by Dr. Anthony Miniaci, head team physician and executive director of Cleveland Clinic Sports Health.

The surgery was neither unexpected nor a setback in the career of the young tight end. He had mentioned plans to have the surgery throughout the 2006 season. He frequently complained of soreness in the knee throughout the latter portions of the year.

Winslow tied a Browns single-season record with 89 receptions in '06.

 

Phil echoed the “arthroscopic surgery” spin, errrrrrrrrrrrrrr, comment in his February 20^th press conference. Look, 99% of avid sports fans hear “arthroscopic surgery” and we think of a routine knee scope cleaning up some loose cartilage, the kind that implies a three-week recovery. The fact that career threatening micro-fracture surgery is technically performed with an arthroscope is the lamest of lame rationalizations. Phil couldn’t seem to tell us straight that it was micro-fracture surgery, and then to make us feel better, allude as his predecessor would that this was just a case of a few “teensy, weensy holes” drilled in Winslow’s knee, the surgeon worked his guts out, and all would be just fine. The first news this was micro-fracture surgery was in Pat Mac’s piece on February 22^nd. OK, so the press release and Phil didn’t SAY The Souljah ™ didn’t have micro-fracture surgery, nor does it deny that they repaired some cartilage damage. But c’mon, they didn’t disclose the nature of the surgery and it sure appears that Phil took the path of obfuscation given that he was dropping the news Bentley is done for 2007, and maybe forever. And unlike any injury BS-ing during the season, he wasn’t gaining any advantage over an opponent by doing this. All he was doing was withholding information about the status of our best player. And that is my beef.

Maybe I need to listen more to the advice of my dawg, G-money, who is essentially an android programmed by Ayn Rand on these matters. WTF should I care so long as KW2 is back in July? He’d accuse me of whining. He’d tell me to go get some Vagasil. Many of you reading are doing that right now. Maybe you’re right.

But dammit, this to me is just another reminder that I as a fan don’t matter. The fact that you don’t need to tell me what is really going on with the team that I obsess over, I pay money to via tickets and gear and grub, is just fine. Maybe it is unfair to pin this on Phil, since this is endemic in this day and age of the NFL as corporate entertainment.

But after we as fans didn’t matter enough to stop Art from taking my team ...

After we didn’t matter enough to stop the NFL from setting us up for failure after using C-town to extort about a dozen new stadia ...

After we’re admonished like chih-drin that after watching setback after setback for one of the worst franchises in pro sports that we should stop the “gloom and doom” mentality when we knew our OL just died after the first play of training camp (not like we weren’t correct or anything) ...

After watching one of the best and most unique fans’ web communities ever to hit cyberspace being gobbled up by a third-rate corporate media outlet and turned out like a $ 20 Ho, and fresh Browns centric content replaced by syndicated “league” pabulum and recycled hacks devoid of any karma connected with Cleveland and Browns’ fans ...

I guess it is fair to call me, as Mike Hargrove would say, red-assed. For anyone outside of Texas and baseball, that means, “thin-skinned”.

Dawgs, I’ll wrap it up and say it plain. I am so sick of losing and rudderless sucking. But I’m still here; I’m still standing. I’ll watch the draft. I’ll hit the sites. I’ll buy the A Pete jersey. I’ll be there surrounded by orange seats in the fall downing a couple $ 5.50 brewskis and slamming soggy, overcooked $ 4.00 brats while The Most Boring Show On Earth ™ stumbles along and the teams’ idea of marketing is to drag out every last body who played before 1990 and show the same black and white highlights from the Mesozoic Era on the big screens. You can have my Browns’ when you can pry them out my cold, dead hands, bitches. Phil, you had me as a fan when the doc slapped my newborn ass.

Just tell me The Truth.