“I have an option to deal
with anything related to our football team that I’d like to,” Smith said. “And that’s how we’ll do it. Everything that happens, from a guy being late to anything that affects our football team, I have a right to deal with that. I do. And I will.”
Smith is expected to fine both players, if he hasn’t done so already. He added that the fact the incident occurred on a day off for players and away from team property would have no bearing on his disciplinary decision.
According to sources familiar with the incident, Miller and Kreutz spent the off day at an FBI shooting range in North Chicago. Tension percolated throughout the day and escalated, sources said, as more alcohol was consumed. Kreutz, a source said, repeatedly warned Miller to stop agitating him. They eventually went to a drinking establishment with other linemen.
According to two people with knowledge of the incident, the fracas began when one player threw a drink at the other. It’s unclear if Miller, who is 6 feet 7 inches and 320 pounds, first swung at Kreutz. But Kreutz landed the only punch, making Miller’s mouth fill with blood when his braces cut his gums. Miller also lost a tooth.
Miller, according to one source, then “lost it,” rushing Kreutz and either throwing an unknown object or striking him in the head with it. One source said it was a 5-pound weight. Another said it was a board. Kreutz, who is 6-2 and 292 pounds, suffered a cut that, according to one source, required double-digit stitches. The center has worn headgear since the incident, although he didn’t acknowledge the cut when asked directly about it Monday. “I don’t have an injury,” Kreutz said.
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Perhaps tellingly in terms of culpability, Miller–the one with the broken jaw–apologized to Kreutz in his statements. Kreutz didn’t directly return the gesture. “I would like to apologize to Olin, my teammates and to my family,” Miller said. “I realize that this is something that was very stupid on both of our parts. It’s not going to happen again. We’re going to move on.” Said Kreutz: “Obviously we didn’t want it to happen. Things went too far. Like Fred [said], we’ve talked about it. We’re pretty much over it. It’s pretty much a done issue for us.”
Little throwback now that we have another NFL punching incident resulting in a broken jaw. Back before Twitter, Facebook, and the internet as we now know it existed, Olin Kreutz was the original Ik Enemkpali. Such a great story to look back on for so many different reasons. First that they actually thought saying Fred Miller broke his jaw falling out of bed in the middle of the night was a legitimate excuse. Like the fight happened, tempers cooled, then the plan they came up with was to say a professional athlete and insanely tough person fractured his jaw when he rolled out of bed. No one said O-lineman were geniuses. Second that this was actually a good Chicago Bear team on the up and up and third that Kreutz still to this day is on the all time “this guy is such a fucking psycho and I’m so happy he’s on my team” list. Olin Kreutz would make Richie Incognito cry, that’s how mean Olin Kreutz was. Think about this for a second, part of the whole cover up was because Fred Miller didn’t want Olin Kreutz to go anger management because he had already been back in college when he broke ANOTHER teammate’s jaw. Olin Kreutz broke a teammates jaw and probably thought to himself “shit, not again!”. And you know what, none of it really mattered because like I said, the Bears were good and trending up. Just goes to prove what we already knew, you can be a circus as long as you win football games.
Oh and for the Jets, they’ll be just fine, they have B-Marsh to be a positive influence in that locker room, I’m sure he’ll stay calm and cool when Ryan Fitzpatrick throws 4 picks in Week 2.