« Former Panther Jason Peter Details NFL Drug Use in New Novel | Home | Fox Digging the Vibe Out of Training Camp »

Gruden Making the Pirate Jokes Too Easy by Holding Chris Simms ‘Hostage’

By Brinson | June 10, 2008

You may recall that blonde waif of a gent, Chris Simms. He used to quarterback our division rival Tampa Bay? Julius Peppers ended his career by squishing Simms’ spleen between a shoulder pad and spinal cord.

Anyway, the young fella has been out of football and appears squarely in Gruden’s doghouse (”NOT TOUGH ENOUGH!!! GARSDFKGAR!”) in terms of not playing. But yet, the Bucs won’t let him go. And he’s angry about it. Or, just angry enough to make pirate jokes about it.

“I feel like I’m being held hostage,” Simms said. “I hate that all this has happened. I love Tampa. My family loves it here. But I’ve been quiet long enough. I feel like it’s time to let everybody know why I’m not out there.”

Aarrrggggh. Avast. And what not. Of course, Simms also mentioned that he and coach weren’t on great terms either.

“I don’t know how anybody can expect me to go back there and look coach Gruden in the eye and believe the relationship is hunky dory after some of the things that were said and done,” Simms said. “Things were handled wrongly from the business end of it and definitely things were handled wrongly as far as how you treat a person.

Apparently too, Simms has done some snooping around, AV style, and found out that teams were offering Tampa Bay late round picks for him during the draft, but the Bucs refused to bite. I have no idea whether they feel they’re doing their moral duty by holding onto him, or if they don’t want Simms to be great elsewhere, or if Gruden just likes collecting little toy figure quarterbacks. But it would appear that Simms isn’t going anywhere either way.