General manager Ryan Pace addressed defensive end last week by signing two experienced guys and now today he and his coaching staff are working out former Chicago Bear, Alonzo Spellman.
At first glance this move seems odd, but Spellman, even at 43 years old, is in better shape than many defensive linemen playing the game today. Here's a snippet of the press release from Spellman's representation, the Law Firm of Romero, Nicholson, Ledger and Hamill , from after his veteran combine workout.
Our client may be older than the average NFL player. Our client may have had some troubles in his past. Our client may not be the typical NFL prospect.
But our client has proven himself at the Veteran Combine by running circles around the other "prospects" trying to make a comeback. In this era of "second chances", our client, Alonzo Robert Spellman , deserves his second chance.
There's only one team he wants to play for and that's the team that secured his rights in the NFL Draft , the Chicago Bears. Spellman's personal trainer, James Jesse , released this statement about Spellman on his MySpace page. Spellman is 6'4", his always chiseled physique currently checks in at pounds.
He recently pumped out 49 reps of lbs on the bench press. He ripped off a 4. He also experienced some off-field incidents and was suspended for 3 games. He finished with 5 starts in 7 games, 15 tackles, 2 sacks and 2 passes defensed.
On November 26, he was re-instated to play against the Detroit Lions. On June 12, , he was waived after he refused to leave his publicist's house for eight hours during a standoff with the police, until being arrested. The next day, he left Good Shepherd Hospital, shirtless and shoeless in freezing weather.
Spellman exhibited erratic behavior during his time with the Bears. The first public incident occurred in March when Spellman became enraged when a doctor was late for an appointment. He pulled a telephone off of a wall and threatened suicide. Complicating matters, Spellman had access to alcohol and a firearm and by this time weighed approximately lbs kg. Authorities were called in, and friend and former teammate Mike Singletary persuaded Spellman to check into a hospital.
Spellman shortly left the hospital of his own accord. In , he posted 78 tackles, 8 sacks led the team , 2 passes defensed and 3 forced fumbles. He became a restricted free agent after the season, when his rookie contract expired. In , he was moved from right to left defensive end during training camp. He collected 66 tackles, 8.
In , new head coach Dave Wannstedt chose not to re-sign Dent and Spellman became the starter at right defensive end. He recorded 60 tackles, 7 sacks second on the team , 8 passes defensed third on the team and one blocked kick. Spellman was selected by the Chicago Bears in the first round 22nd overall of the NFL Draft, entering the league as a year-old rookie. He was a backup behind future hall of famer Richard Dent at right defensive end, making 30 tackles, 4 sacks fourth on the team and one pass defensed.
In , he tallied 28 tackles, and 2. He played college football at Ohio State University. Alonzo Spellman Player. Alonzo Spellman fans also viewed:.
It was a nine-hour standoff in the bitter-cold Chicago winter. This simple accident of bad weather might have caused Alonzo to end up in a body bag.
It was only when Mike Singletary, a former teammate who heard about the incident on his car radio, showed up and talked Spellman down that the standoff ended. But you still don't understand what really happened. From the beginning, Alonzo Spellman has been up to his neck in trouble because, even when he was little, he was big. His mother, Dorothy Spellman, enrolled him in kindergarten when he was 4. At 10, a local gang recruited him, and he got a taste for finding family wherever he could.
Before he finished grammar school, he was sleeping with grown women, neighbors in the rural Mount Holly, N. By the time Spellman entered Rancocas Valley High School -- where Franco Harris once ran wild on the gridiron -- he was a primping, flighty boy who would stop in the middle of whatever he was doing if he noticed his already short hair had grown a tad longer than he liked.
He loved watching Westerns while stretching his 6'3", pound, year-old frame the length of his mother's couch. Big as he was, he had no interest in football. Basketball was his game -- he'd set Rancocas Valley's single-game rebounding record -- and the only way he would play football was if he could be the fullback.
The coaches who came to visit Dorothy at her neat spare apartment in the spring of wouldn't let him do that -- they were thinking defensive end -- but they made a convincing case nonetheless.
The fact was that if Alonzo played two sports, he'd double his chances of becoming a pro and bringing home serious money. That meant something to Dorothy. Alonzo's father was in and out of the house so often he was known mostly as a memory.
Dorothy paid the bills and raised six kids working at a local fish hatchery. She didn't need scouting experience to see her son's potential. So it was that Alonzo became the key to reviving Rancocas Valley High's dormant football program. He made the coaches' hopes real. Although Alonzo was late coming to the game, his innate athleticism made his rawness easy to overlook. The year-old junior won his teammates' respect by making them laugh on the bus and by turning opponents to rag dolls on the field.
He led the team to the state championship his first year. That same year, his girlfriend, a college student named Roxanne James, gave birth to a little girl. Later that spring, he scored well enough on his ACTs -- on his third try -- to be eligible to play at Ohio State. On the field in Columbus, he drew praise and grew dreadlocks. In the classroom he was indifferent, but he partied like a true Buckeye and slept with as many female students as his fame and personality could get him. One such rendezvous resulted in his second child, another girl.
And in a pattern that recurred later in his pro career, Spellman played well but below expectations. Still, he played well enough to convince many pro scouts he had the stuff to play big in the pros. He made himself eligible for the '92 NFL draft, and Mike Ditka made the year-old with swollen muscles the Bears' first-round pick, 22nd overall. At first, Ditka's bet looked smart. Alonzo changed. He cut his hair and the partying and hit the playbook hard. Sometimes he was unstoppable.
Alonzo bought into the mystique and started calling himself the Last Halas Bear. He told the press he was "the Sheriff" from the Westerns of his youth. His bravado endeared him to Ditka and fans. And with all those legendary teammates, he was never asked for more than his raw talent could contribute. You are rolling down State Street with seven other passengers as Spellman steers his custom 4x4. Next to you, an undersized black kid from the Michigan countryside fishes out a leather, metal-studded dog collar from behind the seat.
He holds it out in front of his face. Spellman's honeymoon with the Bears lasted but one season. Ditka left, as did many of Spellman's on-field role models: Singletary after the '92 season, Dent a year later.
As the veterans departed, the Bears needed more and more from Alonzo, but the more they asked of him, the worse he performed. Talk around the league was that you could assign a fullback to block him and get away with it. His best attribute was his imposing appearance: "Looks like Tarzan, hits like Jane" is how one former teammate describes him.
Cracks like this one hinted at other issues, the kind that can wreak havoc in the Neanderthal world of pro football. Spellman was particularly known for his great sexual appetite. He's a freak," says a former female partner. Later on, he would flaunt his sexual friskiness in public.
But before that, Spellman's erratic play plus the rumors -- true or not -- caused some teammates to balk at anointing him their defensive leader -- or having him in their locker room.
This spring he turned up at the Chicago club Crobar as a model in a gay and lesbian fashion show, during which he lost the skirt he was wearing and began dancing around the club. And this summer, according to published reports, he was spotted being led into Dennis Rodman's Illusions, another Chicago club, by a male acquaintance, attached to a leash and wearing a certain metal-studded dog collar. This is how it is when you go looking for Spellman this summer in the ghetto that is his refuge.
The kids in The Gardens know him from word of mouth and keep track of his latest tattoos. You hear he's staying in Mount Holly, at a seedy motel, but to him it's still a safe place to stay now that football is a million miles away. There's a mom-and-pop shop on the same block as The Gardens where Alonzo goes to replenish his food and drink. The old women who watched out for him back in the day still come by to order bags of sugar and peanuts. The Asian woman who's been there forever still works the grill.
They tell you that when Alonzo stops by and the neighborhood kids ask for candy, he never says no. And sometimes, he just picks up the tab for everyone in the place. But the Bears, worried that the year-old Spellman would finally blossom in another team's field, exercised their right to match the offer.
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