Vikings’ Smith Out For Season
The Minnesota Vikings have lost Robert Smith for the season. Again.
Smith suffered a complete tear of the medial collateral ligament in his left knee and at least a partial tear of the posterior cruciate ligament during the first quarter of Monday night’s 15-13 loss to the Chicago Bears.
“I feel like I let a lot of people down,” Smith said Tuesday, pausing several times to compose himself. “I feel like I let this team down. I’m not going to be there in the stretch run - again.”
It is the second time in Smith’s four NFL seasons that a knee injury ended his season - it was his right knee in 1993 - and he also missed nearly the entire second half of 1995 with a badly sprained ankle.
But he entered Monday’s game with no health problems this season and on pace for 1,584 yards, 381 better than the team record Terry Allen set in 1992. Ironically, Allen, now with the Washington Redskins, set that record between reconstructive surgery on both knees, the right in 1990 and the left in 1993.
Redskins players hurt
Two Washington Redskins players and a team intern were injured when the car they were riding in overturned in Colonial Beach, Va.
State police spokeswoman Mary Evans identified the injured as Cory Raymer, 23; Brian Thure, 23, and Hugo Garcia, 26.
Raymer is a second-year center and Thure a second-year guard. Garcia is an intern working with the team’s strength and condition coach, according to Mike McCall, the Redskins director of public relations.
A fourth person in the 1995 GMC, Anthony Giordano, was not injured. McCall said Giordano was not associated with the Redskins.
According to Evans, the GMC driven by Raymer swerved to the right when a car driven by William Earl Roy, 80, turned into its path around 3:12 p.m. Raymer then overcorrected to the left, flipping the vehicle, she said.
Around the league
The Oakland Raiders have reinstated defensive end Anthony Smith after a four-week suspension, imposed when the former first-round draft pick skipped a team flight to a game in Chicago. … New York Giants rookie wide receiver Amani Toomer will miss the rest of the season after surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. … Kansas City Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer denied complaints by Denver coach Mike Shanahan that the Chiefs are guilty of unethical blocking techniques. The charges were raised Sunday after Kansas City’s Dale Carter injured Denver cornerback Lionel Washington while blocking him low on a running play late in the Broncos’ 34-7 victory. … Bryan Cox, the Chicago Bears’ defensive leader, will have surgery later this week on his broken left hand. He hopes to miss only one game.