Sam Hurd fallout: Bears GM defends organziation
Jerry Angelo is convinced the Bears did everything possible to investigate Sam Hurd's character before he was signed last summer to a three-year, $4.15 million contract as a waived free agent.
Hurd was arrested Wednesday night after he purchased one kilogram of cocaine from an undercover federal agent and a confidential government informant. He told the two that he was seeking to purchase a half-ton of marijuana and 5-10 kilograms of cocaine per week. Hurd appeared Friday before a federal judge in Chicago and was released later after posting $100,000 bail (see related story).
“For me to sit here and say that we should have known something that we didn't know, I can't say that in this case,” said Angelo, the Bears' general manager. “There's no foundation for anybody to say that.
“There are no facts, there are no flags that anybody could present tangibly to say we should have known otherwise. I want to make that perfectly clear to the public, to our fans. We do our homework; we do our due diligence. We did everything you could possibly do given the information that we can allocate.”
An acquaintance who was driving Hurd's car in Texas was pulled over in late July, days before the start of training camp. The vehicle was found to contain $88,000 in cash and a marijuana plant, according to investigators. Angelo said that incident did not come to light in any of the investigative measures the Bears took before they signed him.
“His vehicle was pulled over, and he was not the driver, and that was never made public,” Angelo said. “So he was never charged with anything. There was never any record to our knowledge and it was, from my understanding, a citation. Other than that, there was no other information that was presented to us.”
The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Hurd is a San Antonio native who played collegiately at Northern Illinois and was signed by the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2006. He finished his NIU career second in school history with 2,322 receiving yards and third with 21 touchdown catches.
“When we do our homework on players, we have a very sound and tested methodology that we go about researching all players in college to veteran free agents, and it starts in college,” Angelo said. “We spend an inordinate amount of time on character, making sure we know the player as well as we can.”
Bears coach Lovie Smith said the situation has been a painful learning experience for the organization.
“What you find out in life, is that you really don't know,” Smith said. “But you have to trust people. We're always going to start out doing that. We have a great group of guys, but sometimes when you're dealing with this many, it's hard to have all of the players be a certain way.
“But you can't let that scar what else we're getting done here. It's always about the team. Every once in a while, guys will go outside of what's best for the football team and there are consequences that you deal with. That's how life goes. There are life lessons being learned here by our football team.”
The concern now for the Bears is that other players on the team may be involved, although none have been mentioned.
“I can't talk about that,” Angelo said. “I'm certainly not going on any witch hunts here about players. The one thing that we've done, when there's been a wrong, we've acted. We don't just justify wrongs, and we've acted. We have a track record of doing that.
“Unfortunately, a situation arose that caught us off guard, but not to the point where we aren't going to do the right thing, and the right thing is to cut Sam Hurd.”
When asked how the Hurd episode would impact Angelo's future with the Bears, the general manager instructed the questioner to “whistle Dixie.”
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