Saturday Notes: Smith Denied Number Change Request

by Sean Yuille on Sep 6, 2008 3:20 AM EDT in Detroit Lions Notes

And now for your daily Tatum Bell "bag-gate" update... Bell went on The Dan Patrick Show yesterday to defend himself and really didn't come out looking any less guilty. His story seems like it could be true at some points, but as Patrick said, there are too many loose ends. Bell easily could have grabbed Rudi Johnson's bags thinking they were Victor DeGrate's, but that doesn't explain what happened to everything in the bags. If Johnson's stuff turned up then this story could be put to rest, but that doesn't exactly seem like it's going to happen anytime soon.
One other note from the Tatum Bell interview is that The DP Show tried to get Rudi Johnson to come on, but he wasn't available according to the Lions. I don't doubt that the Lions likely want Johnson to keep quiet regarding this entire situation so it doesn't become a bigger distraction than it already is, but even if they don't care Johnson is probably spending his free time studying the playbook anyways.
Kevin Smith wasn't allowed to change his number to 24 after the league denied his request. Smith is #34 right now and asked safety Dwight Smith if he could take over the #24 jersey, but the NFL wouldn't let him as Smith's rookie cards and jersey sold to the public read #34.

After Greg Blue, who was #24, was cut a week ago, there have been a few number changes. Dwight Smith apparently took Blue's old number before switching back to #26, and Kalvin Pearson then took #24 over to leave #32 open for Rudi Johnson.
Drew Stanton's cast was "reconfigured" to allow him to at least hand the ball off should he absolutely have to come into a game. That would mean that both Jon Kitna and Dan Orlovsky went down with injuries, so let's hope Stanton doesn't have to play in a situation like that.
Barry Sanders is still getting asked questions about why he retired when he did.

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