Empty the Bench

Getting cut by a running-back needy team like the Detroit Lions motivated Kevin Jones to work even harder in his rehab from a broken foot. His status is still up in the air, but he at least has a job with the Chicago Bears. Fellow ex-Lion Tatum Bell has taken his release slightly differently.

Bell, who initially made Detroit’s final 53-man roster and was slated to back up rookie Kevin Smith, was recently replaced by ex-Cincinnati Bengals stud RB Rudi Johnson and subsequently cut. Apparently he reacted by heisting Johnson’s bags while he was meeting with GM Matt Millen:

Johnson left his bags outside CEO Matt Millen’s office while he met with team officials and, ultimately, worked out a deal with the team. When Johnson came back to get his bags, they were nowhere to be found. The team checked the videotapes generated by the team’s in-house surveillance system, and they quickly identified the culprit: Tatum Bell.

Per the source, Tatum Bell took the bags to the house of a female acquaintance. When confronted on the matter, Bell offered up some cockamamie story that he thought the bags belonged to someone he knew. The girl, however, said that she hadn’t seen Bell in several months and he showed up out of the blue and asked her to keep the bags for a while.

Johnson has since retrieved the bags, and Bell has since been busy filling out applications for admission to a local Clown College. We could not confirm rumors that he was not asked back for a second interview for the night shift at White Castle after the manager found three packets of ketchup and a stack of napkins in his pocket.

**UPDATE**

Rudi Johnson says that once the bags were returned nearly everything was missing. He’s issued a bunch of a (hilarious) statements on the matter:

“Underwear, socks, credit cards and money. He left my money clip with no money in it. He should’ve taken the clip, too. It’s quite stupid if you ask me.”

“All of this happened after he got released and came in and got some stuff out of his locker,” Johnson said. “That’s when he scooped the bags up, some real shyster, conniving stuff. He tried to make up some excuse, he tried to blame it on somebody else so I didn’t try to entertain something that didn’t make any sense.”

“I’m not going to the police for this one,” he said. “I don’t need anybody else, I can handle it. He knows how I feel about it, trust me. He knows how I feel about it and it’s nothing positive. He said it was a mixup. It is what it is.”

**SECOND UPDATE**

It’s an overused, cliched phrase, but seriously: you cannot make this stuff up.

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