Former Chicago Bears WR Sam Hurd Released from Lockup on $100K Bond

Chicago - Sam Hurd is out of a federal jail after posting $100,000 cash bond Friday afternoon, but the Bears receiver and special teams player now he is also out of a job.

The team cut him Friday. General manager Jerry Angelo called it "the right thing to do."

"There were no facts, there were no flags, that anybody could present tangibly to say we should have known otherwise, and I want to make that perfectly clear to the public, to our fans," Angelo said Friday. "We do our homework. We do our due diligence. We did everything you could possibly do given the information that we can allocate."

Hurd was arrested Wednesday night, night outside a Chicago steakhouse. He's charged with accepting a kilo of cocaine from an undercover federal agent posing as a drug dealer. He's also accused of trying to set up a major drug network.

• Read the full criminal complaint (PDF) >> 

Federal authorities allege in a criminal complaint that Hurd told the undercover officer that he wanted to purchase 5 to 10 kilos of cocaine and 1000 pounds of marijuana a week to sell in Chicago, also claiming he was already moving four kilos of cocaine a week, but his supplier couldn't provide him more.

"He's eager to fight this case, he's eager to get to court, he's eager for the truth to come out, and the truth will come out," his Los Angeles based attorney Brett Greenfield said.

League spokesman Brian McCarthy said the NFL was closely monitoring the situation. Asked about a report that authorities have a list of NFL players with ties to the drug case, McCarthy said: "We are not aware of such a list."

Hurd appeared in court in an orange prison jumpsuit, shackled at his ankles. He was joined by his wife Stacee, his mother and his father-in-law. They left court without commenting.

After Hurd posted his bond he was released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in a highly unusual manner.

It appears federal agents sneaked him out in the back of a pickup truck with blacked-out windows and dropped him off at a secret location to avoid creating any public safety issues that might have ensued had Hurd just been allowed to walk out of the facility which was surrounded by news crews.

Hurd's attorney declined to address specific allegations in the criminal complaint, but did talk about rumors that Hurd had been supplying drugs to other NFL players.

"Out of respect to the NFL, out of respect to his teammates, out of respect to other players, he 100 percent denies that allegations. It's patently and totally false," Greenfield said, hoping to put any rumors to rest as the wide receiver without a team prepares to fight the charges that could put him in jail for 40 years.

A former federal prosecutor says the case against Hurd looks pretty solid based on the facts laid out in the criminal complaint.

"The question is what else is there? And what other information do they have on him, what information does he have on others, how widespread is this potential scheme and how useful can he be to help prosecutors build a case against others," former federal prosecutor Gil Sofer said.

Greenfield described his client as very calm and very positive despite the arrest.

Hurd's next court appearance will be in Texas, where the charges were filed. No date has been set, but it is likely to be scheduled in the next 30 days, after the case is presented to a grand jury.

The case could send shockwaves throughout the league and be its “worst nightmare,” according to sportswriter Lester Munson.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. The closest thing might be Michael Vick,” Munson said. “I don’t think that people who cover drug cases only have seen a case like this. This is really a shocking case.”

The 26-year-old Hurd was in his first year with the Bears and sixth year overall in the NFL after five years with the Cowboys. Angelo said the Bears performed an extensive background check on Hurd, a San Antonio native who played at Northern Illinois, before signing him in July to a three-year deal reportedly worth up to $5.15 million, including a $1.35 million signing bonus and base pay this season of $685,000.

"We go back, we ask questions," Angelo said. "Is there something we could have done, something we should have done, in the process? Sometimes, there are glitches, but in this case, there are none. I could sit here and tell you with total transparency that we did everything we know to do in terms of our research, and there was nothing that we found that would create a flag or an alert or a real concern in Sam Hurd's case."

Asked how certain he was that other players on the Bears or around the league were not involved, Angelo said, "I can't talk about that."

"I'm certainly not going on any witch hunts about players," he added. "The one thing that we've done when there's been a wrong, we've acted. We don't justify wrongs. We've acted. We have a track record of doing that. Unfortunately, a situation arose that caught us off guard, but not to the point where we aren't going