New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - Cie healthy, and playing WLB

Quote:

Grant hears career clock ticking
This season crucial for LB as he returns from knee injuries
Thursday, May 26, 2005
By Mike Triplett
Staff writer
Third-year linebacker Cie Grant has been a healthy participant during the first two weeks of the Saints' coaching sessions.

After missing all of last season and most of his rookie year with injuries, Grant is hoping this is the year he finally battles through them.

"I'm hungry right now, and I think it's pretty much a do-or-die situation for me. I think my back is really against the wall," said Grant, a third-round draft choice out of Ohio State in 2003, who spent last season on injured reserve.

Grant has been plagued by a chronic left knee injury. He suffers from inflammation of his patellar tendon. Doctors told him last spring that the knee could be treated without surgery but that he would have to live with the pain. But last fall, the knee kept swelling and he was unable to play.

Grant missed eight games in 2003 with injuries to his knee and to his right calf. He has been working out since March and said he hopes things will be different this season. But he won't make any predictions or promises.

"The past couple of years, I was always talking about, 'I'll be back, I'll be back.' But now it's no time to talk. It's just every day I get out here and get an opportunity to show that I'm ready instead of telling people I'm ready," said Grant, who said he never had any injury problems in high school or college.

"I feel pretty good, but I'm sort of keeping it to myself. I thought I felt good last year and the year before that. So now it's just actions that are going to speak much louder than any words I can tell you or the coaches or anyone else. Because I think people are pretty tired of hearing, 'Hey, I'm all right.' "

Coach Jim Haslett said he still has high hopes for Grant.

"He looks great to me running around, and physically and athletically he's doing a great job," Saints coach Jim Haslett said, adding that he has also learned to take a wait-and-see approach with Grant.

Haslett said the Saints moved Grant from middle to weakside linebacker this year to reduce the wear and tear on his body and because the team added middle linebacker Alfred Fincher in the third round of this year's draft.

NO TALKS WITH BROWN: General Manager Mickey Loomis said he has not talked with starting right cornerback Fakhir Brown or his agent, Ted Marchibroda Jr., about a contract extension, and those talks are not in his plans.

Brown, who is in the second year of a two-year deal with the Saints, has not participated in the voluntary coaching sessions while asking for a new contract.

"He's under contract," Loomis said. "I have no interest in talking to him until he's here participating with this team."

http://www.nola.com/saints/t-p/index...7007113770.xml

This is Mike's article. I mean I guess that's good news. They can't operate on it though and we'll see how far "playing through pain" gets him. He can't hurt as a backup. What I found most interesting was he said they moved him to WLB cause we drafted MLB Alfred Fincher. Did Finch get the job already, or is it being handed to him? Or is he behind Watson?