Day 22 Camp Report; Thoughts on Ronnie Rumor

Here are some notes from today's practice and Sparano's press conference:

• Joey Porter (back, knee) did not practice, but rode the bike. Charlie Anderson (hamstring) and Ronnie Brown (thumb) also did not practice. Shawn Murphy (ankle) returned to practice. (Link)
• Sparano hopefully ended the ludicrous (in my opinion) rumors that were swirling about the team trading Ronnie Brown. He had this to say:

  "No. There's no chance we'll trade Ronnie ... There's been no discussion of that internally or externally."

• Sparano also officially named Donald Thomas as the starting RG and Kendall Langford as the starting LDE.

Let me say one more thing about the Ronnie Brown rumor. If Chris Mortensen was suggesting that Ronnie Brown doesn't look as good as Ricky Williams right now, well he is absolutely right. But is that a good reason to trade away one of the team's best young players?

The reason Brown has been struggling in the preseason games and generally has not looked as good as Williams is because Ronnie is STILL RECOVERING FROM KNEE SURGERY. People need to understand that. Ronnie could very well struggle for much of the first half of the season as he continues to return to full health. He is only 10 months removed from an operation that usually takes 12-16 months to fully heal. The fact that he's even out on the field playing is a huge achievement at the moment.

So let's not be hasty with Ronnie and let's expect him not to be the same guy he was at the start of last year...at least not right away. That's why Parcells and Ireland kept Ricky. This is exactly the situation where the team will need him. He isn't going to supplant Ronnie long-term; he's going to support him short-term.