I’ve let all kinds of Browns news fly by without comment, but I do want to keep my hand in this blog and my voice in the mix of conversation about this rapidly-transforming franchise.

So I can’t just ignore the strange fact that the family company run by the team’s new owner was raided this week by dozens of FBI and IRS agents. The surprise visit on the Knoxville headquarters of Pilot Flying J, the nation’s top truck stop chain and the sixth-largest privately-owned company in the U.S., was part of a criminal investigation that the feds aren’t discussing.

Stranger still that scion-in-chief Jimmy Haslan III would so readily assert that the matter stems from alleged non-payment of rebates to “a very insignificant number of customers.”

The blogger known as Jim Kanicki said it all much better and sooner than I, so dig into the intrigue. Federal judges don’t typically let G-men and T-men suddenly rifle through the private machinations of a major, politically-connected oil bidness over some two-bit civil dispute.

Can’t blame Jimmy for trying some damage control, but to me it harkens back to Butch Davis’ characterization of Kelly Holcomb’s 2003 ankle injury. The 0-2 Browns were in San Francisco, and the winner of a hotly-contested QB controversy got landed upon while running up the gut from the Browns’ own end zone.

At halftime, Davis said Holcomb had been “kicked” and was “fine.” Turns out his halftime X-ray showed a broken ankle, yet he was kept in the game and afterward lauded for his gutsy performance in a 13-12 comeback win. Davis paraphrased the doctors: “Hey look, he’s fine, it’s a non-weight-bearing deal, he’s got a tiny, small, little hairline fracture.”

The next day, Davis defied reports that the man with the broken right fibula and sprained left ankle was anything worse than day-to-day. “If he was going to be gone four-to-six, trust me, I wouldn’t be telling you and setting myself up for looking like a fool on Wednesday,” Davis said.

Holcomb missed the next three games, two of which the Browns won behind Tim Couch. He relieved Couch in the next two games, both losses, and managed just one more win behind center during that 5-11 trainwreck of a follow-up to a playoff season.

For the sake of our Browns, let’s hope Jimmy hadn’t already seen the X-rays before he fed that line to the media.