Alonzo Spellman practiced Monday for the first time since playing Sept. 21 against the New England Patriots. But questions continue to swirl around the veteran defensive end.
A suspension. Disputed back pay. Leftover hard feelings on both sides because of his extended absence from the team. His future with the Bears.
Some of those issues may be solved in the next couple of weeks; others will take longer. But in the meantime, Spellman is back.
“I’ve got to play well for three weeks straight, and that’s what my focus is, to go out and play as hard as I possibly can and get it done for three weeks,” Spellman said. “I’m not really thinking about anything else.”
Spellman will not start Sunday against the Buffalo Bills, and how much he plays in the game will depend on how coaches assess his conditioning and performance in practice. Carl Reeves will start his 10th game at right end, but even that may not be without a small measure of controversy.
Spellman is returning from injury, and NFL custom is that players do not lose their jobs to injury.
“If any other player gets hurt or gets injured, they come back and they play,” Spellman said. “I don’t think it should be any different for Alonzo Spellman.”
But Spellman may have been in the process of being benched when he injured his shoulder. Reeves replaced him in the third quarter at New England, and coaches were not satisfied with Spellman’s production–a half-sack and six tackles before the Patriots game, when he had a sack and three tackles.
“He’s a guy who, when the year started, we were looking at to make an impact on our team and our defense,” coach Dave Wannstedt said. “Now obviously we’re in the situation we are, Carl Reeves and the guys are playing well, and I would expect Alonzo, for whatever amount of plays he plays, to play at the level he’s capable of playing.”
To do that, Spellman admittedly must push some significant issues into the background. He is appealing the $335,294 that the Bears did not pay him during their three-game suspension.
Spellman has also been suspended four games by the NFL for failing to take a mandatory steroids test early last month. He took the test Nov. 21, one day after being cleared by doctors to return to the field, and is permitted to continue playing while his appeal is pending.
“That was clearly a total misunderstanding,” said Spellman, who was under suspension by the Bears and not permitted at Halas Hall at the time the test was ordered. “I don’t understand how it (the suspension) got public, and that remains to be seen.”
What also remains to be seen is what place, if any, Spellman has in the Bears’ future. The organization was not pleased by what it claims was a refusal to comply with the treatment plan for his shoulder, and the severity of the injury, diagnosed initially as a strained rotator cuff, has been questioned.
Spellman has not forgotten the doubts and the suspension, but is determined to put them in the past. For now.
“It was disappointing that it happened,” Spellman said. “But that’s the thing that I can’t dwell on right now. I felt like I could never get hurt. That’s what was so hard, so devastating to me mentally. But when it does happen, you’ve got to bounce back from it, keep on going, and that’s what I did.”
