Lovie Smith Denies Offering Broncos Bounty to Take Out Benson

One day after the NFL announced it would not punish the Green Bay Packers for their defensive players use of financial incentives to try and achieve team goals, another NFC North team, the Chicago Bears, is denying charges of the use of bounties. Bears head coach Lovie Smith denied offering Denver Broncos defenders his weekly salary in exchange for taking out underachieving running back Cedric Benson for the season. Benson left Sunday's game with a left leg injury and was ruled out for the season Monday.

"That is simply not true," Smith said. "I would never offer an opponent any sort of incentive or motivate them to take out any of my offensive players that are not playing up to their abilities. If that was the case don't you think (quarterback Rex) Grossman would have left a game with a shattered fibula a long time ago?"

When initially asked his thoughts on Benson's season Smith first pretended that he couldn't hear the reporter's question, then he responded with a series of unintelligible mumbling and trivia about the TV show "Benson."

After being pressed for details the coach called Benson's injury a "tough break" and said the team will "miss him." Although he often smiled and even laughed while discussing Benson's injury, Smith assured reporters that he was disappointed his team would be losing its starting running back and said the overwhelming feeling of restrained joy permeating the press conference was just their imagination. He said he was chuckling because he didn't understand the injury and characterized it as "just nervous laughter, like when a Japanese businessman doesn't understand what a foreign associate is saying."

"Why would I be happy about losing a guy that averages almost three yards per carry for us," Smith asked. "That's almost the league average. And I've never seen someone pretend to run harder that Cedric, and now we've lost him due to circumstances completely and totally out of my control. He was serviceable, but in the end we have to move on without him. Just remember that nobody has done more for us on offense this year than Cedric, and that makes me want to cry."