Out of nowhere, the Indianapolis Colts released former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Chris Rainey Monday morning.
Rainey, who had reportedly been impressing so far in training camp with the Colts, was let go for violating team rules, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN.
Colts head coach Chuck Pagano recently lavished Rainey with praise.
“When we got Chris a year ago, he had been on a couch for 11 months,” Pagano said. “I don’t know what he was doing work-wise but he was living on a sofa with his brother, ‘He Hate Me.’ We had ‘He Hate Me’ in Oakland. Great dude. Love him. When I was at Oakland and I left Oakland to go back to college in 2007, his brother, ‘He Hate Me’, he said, ‘Coach good luck. I know you’re leaving, but you might want to take a look at this cat,’ and he handed me a DVD.
“It was of Chris Rainey and he was a senior at Lakeland High School. I’m going back to college, so I go home, packed up the house and it’s me and Tori, my youngest daughter, and we popped it in and watched four plays. She told me, ‘Go get that guy, that guy can play.’ It looked like everyone else was standing still on the tape and that’s what he looks like now. You can see the athleticism, the burst, the speed. He puts a foot in the ground and gets north and south.”
While Rainey may very well have been progressing and impressing, whatever he did that got him released so quickly from the Colts must have been pretty serious. The Florida product waited a long time to find a new team following him being waived by the Steelers immediately after the 2012 season and it looks like he might be done for good after this later incident.
Rainey was originally drafted by the Steelers in the fifth round of the 2012 NFL Draft.
