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U-T San Diego: Jared Gaither can't return to S.D. •(Teammates say he's faking injuries)•

G.A.C.O.L.B.

By G.A.C.O.L.B.
in Around the NFL

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G.A.C.O.L.B.

G.A.C.O.L.B.

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Posted

Damn, don't know if I can recall ever reading a story like this about a player. And I remember how much some here wanted to sign him.

http://web.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/04/acee-jared-gaither-return/

Acee: Jared Gaither can't return to S.D.

Written by Kevin Acee

1:26 p.m., Jan. 4, 2013

We don’t know what the new Chargers General Manager will decide regarding so many pending personnel questions.

But there is no doubt about the status of one player.

Left tackle Jared Gaither will not be back. He can’t be.

That eventuality has not been guaranteed by the remaining decision makers at Chargers Park, but it has been hinted at strongly.

Even if the Chargers brass had some wildly naïve/ignorant notion that Gaither would remain healthy -- or not pretend he was more hurt than he was, as virtually everyone in the organization believes was the case in 2012 – Gaither would not be welcome in the locker room.

I“I can’t even look him in the eye,” one veteran told me earlier in the season, after Gaither had sat out the first three games with a back issue that no one could clearly diagnose.

On Dec. 23, here is what another veteran said, unsolicited, when ruminating on the ruins of the season: “----ing Gaither. He ----ing cost us big-time.

”Several other players voiced similar sentiments. Some suspected within a couple weeks that Gaither was milking his back injury. Others didn’t get frustrated until September. Many held out until the end of the season. But by then, there were no dissenters.

It’s impossible to state how rare that is. Players don’t question other players’ injuries. It’s in the code. Even when they quietly wondered about oft-injured former wide receiver Buster Davis’ toughness, players gave him the benefit of the doubt that he wanted to be on the field.

When the Chargers placed Gaither on injured reserve in November, this time because of a groin injury of dubious severity, the team essentially told him to go home, that they didn’t want him around. (If he denies this, it’s only because his dimness might rival his suspected fraudulence. He was told he could go home, didn’t need to stay around.)

The super-talented behemoth of a man played five virtually flawless games for the Chargers in 2011 to earn a contract with $9 million guaranteed. The Chargers knew signing him was a risk, given his history of injuries and rumblings by his former employers that he was lazy and even a faker. But Gaither was the only starting left tackle available in free agency.

Gaither ended up playing parts of four games. Since that’s all he will play, he ended up costing the Chargers $2.25 million per game he was active. The charge was $36,144 per snap played and the bargain price of $37,974 per snap in which he was not responsible for Philip Rivers being hit, hurried or sacked.

Still, it is better to waste $9 million already committed and absorb the $6 million cap hit by releasing Gaither than risk owing him $4.5 million if he’s on the roster at the start of the 2013 season.

Asked if Gaither could ever return and be accepted by teammates, safety Eric Weddle was as gracious as he could be: “He could. It would take a lot of work to earn back the respect. And that’s not going to happen

.”Team president Dean Spanos knows this. So it doesn’t matter who the new GM is.

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ptr77

ptr77

Posted
Posted

This is weird. On the one hand you assume he is a lazy, faker, and just wanted the money. On the other hand I have had a broken vertebrae before, a bulged disc, and other back injuries before and I can honestly say it is some of the most excruciating and mystifying pain I have ever felt. I played 4 hockey games with a compression fracture of a vertebrae before it was diagnosed, I was in pain but figured it was just a badly bruised muscle. I quit doing any physical activity for a good 2 years and suffered excruciating pain with a "slight" bulge of a disc that didn't show up until my 2nd MRI and even then to me looked no larger than the size of a marble. I'm not sure what to believe here.

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