When Maurice Clarett, after being pulled over with a small arsenal in his car, talked of receiving threats on his life, he may not have been making that up. When I first read his claim, I just sort of assumed that the man had gone Tom Cruise crazy. But he got another threat today, this one on a typewritten postcard that arrived at the offices of the lawyers representing him.

No one’s saying what was on the note, or what it means. It’s described as “very cyptic.” Kinda gives some more credence to Tom Friend’s article, where he sorta theorized that Clarett owed some people money, and they’d like it back.

As for Clarett himself, his lawyer says he’s doing alright in jail.

“He’s been in very good spirits,” Hoague said. “He’s basically sitting in his cell, doing sit-ups and push-ups and reading the Bible, all day long.”

He gets to jail, and now he wants to train. Better late than never, I suppose, but a few sit-ups and some Bible study might’ve been a little more useful if they had come, say, I dunno… a couple of months before the NFL combine. But if that’s true, and he is in good spirits, I don’t find that hard to believe at all. His only responsibility in prison is not to get shanked or raped, and if he’s isolated and protected, yeah, he’s probably happier without any responsibilities in there.

About four hours before Maurice Clarett was arrested on Tuesday night, he made a call to ESPN the Magazine’s Tom Friend. Friend shares the nature of that phone call – and a lot of other stuff you probably didn’t know about Maurice Clarett – here in this incredible ESPN.com article.

You’re not going to find much better reads than this one, and somewhere in here might be the reason that Clarett had four loaded guns, a bulletproof vest, and a bottle of Goose. I’ll see if I can hit the high points for you, but you really should read it for yourself.

• Clarett, after Ohio State kicked him out, moved to LA and lived with some rich people involved in the rap industry. They set him up with cars, trainers, money, an easy life, anything he wanted.
• He neglected any and all training for his upcoming NFL career
• Clarett is massively, massively insecure and self-conscious
• He quit on one trainer, and then asked to be hooked up with the guy who was training David Boston, he of the unnatural strength and physique
• In Denver, he carried around a water bottle full of Grey Goose with him at all times
• He got into an argument with the Denver strength coach, and demanded to the GM that the strength coach be fired. When he wasn’t fired, Clarett then demanded a trade. Before he had signed a rookie contract
• He turned down a $416,000 signing bonus, for an incentive-laden deal that paid him for 1,000-yard seasons and Pro Bowls. He got cut, and did not make any money.
• He went back to Ohio, and, you’d have to assume, owed some people back in LA some money
• He recently had a daughter
• His agent claimed that he had received death threats
• He told Friend he’d do anything to protect his daughter, saying he’d go to jail for 30 years if he had to
• He made a series of phone calls that night, to Friend, to Jim Tressell, and to LeBron James, thanking all of them
• And shortly after was arrested

Pretty easy to connect the dots there. Maybe some of it was in his head, maybe the guy just simply had some mental problems (something the Sports Frog was talking about back in ’03). But it’s certainly a compelling theory, and is as close to ‘believable’ as anything is going to get in this story.

This is the most bizarre and surreal sports story since OJ Simpson. It may be the only thing that’s happened in my lifetime that even comes close to OJ, in terms of just sheer unbelievability. The arrest itself was so sensational and bizarre, but the picture painted by that outstanding Tom Friend article just pushes it to an entirely new level. It’s absolutely surreal. Maurice Clarett being a screw-up is one thing. This is a damn Greek tragedy.

Sometimes when you read about an athlete getting arrested, it’s funny. Like when an offensive guard gets picked up for Boating Under the Influence, for example. Other times, it’s sad, like, “Ah, that’s too bad, I’d like to see that guy get his life together.” But sometimes – not often, but sometimes – it progresses to the point where you say, “Alright, it’s time to get this motherfucker off the streets.”

And it gets to that point when a guy is arrested while wearing a bulletproof vest, with four loaded guns in his car, all of which were loaded and in the front seat, in addition to the hatchet and the open bottle of Grey Goose, which he was drinking in front of cops. Say what you want about Maurice Clarett, but the man has good taste in vodka. The photos you see here are of his actual arrest, and of his actual Goose.

There’s just not much to say. The guy is a danger to himself and to society. There are very few good reasons to be driving around, hammered, in a bulletproof vest and with four loaded guns in the front seat. Someone was probably going to get hurt last night.

It all should have been so much different for Maurice Clarett. It’s time to just get him off the streets and get him some help before he kills himself or someone else.

Bengals guard Eric Steinbach is getting creative. This past Saturday night, Steinbach said “Fuck Chris Henry and his gun charges, fuck A.J. Nicholson and his grand theft, fuck Frostee Rucker and his spousal battery, fuck Odell Thurman and his substance abuse. Check this one out, bitches. BOATING UNDER THE INFLUENCE, MY FRIEND. Ya get that? BOATING under the influence. I boat SHITFACED. That’s what I DO.”

Okay, that’s not a direct quote, and he probably didn’t say anything like that, though I really wish he would have. He did actually get arrested and charged with boating under the influence, however. An officer spotted him in an “idle-only” zone, and Steinbach proceeded to fail a series of field sobriety tests. An entire series of them. To his credit, though, he was drunk on a boat and did not have both business ends of a specialty dildo stuffed into two prostitutes.

Points for creativity, Eric. A run-of-the-mill DUI is nothing. You probably don’t even get called into Marvin Lewis’s office for that. Any idiot can get hammered and get behind the wheel of a car. But it takes a special kind of an idiot to pick up a BUI.

The race is on for the next Bengal to get their pilot’s license and pick up an FUI.

In the only pick of the NFL’s supplemental draft, the Bengals made a bit of a surprise move and picked up Virginia linebacker Ahmad Brooks. He’s a talented player, but he’s got some issues. He started for three seasons at Virginia, but he got hurt, and played only six games last year, before being kicked off the team completely. Virginia coach Al Groh never did specify the reasons for his dismissal. And then, with some time on his hands, Brooks let himself go a bit and was tipping the scaled at 290, before getting back into decent shape for some NFL workouts.

Hard to figure out what the Bengals are doing here. It’s like they’re thinking, “Okay, everything’s fixed now, so we’ll just sign all these guys, and it will work out perfectly, because everything’s all better.” They’ve finally finally got things on track. And now Chris Henry is getting arrested every week, draft pick A.J. Nicholson is arrested for all kinds of craziness, another draft pick named Frostee Rucker is charged with beating his wife, and now, they’re rolling the dice on another guy with character issues. This is not the California Penal League, Vaughn.

Now, I’m not making any judgements about Ahmad Brooks here. To my knowledge, he’s never been arrested, and I’m not saying he’s the next O.J. or something. I have no idea about his actual character, but… the red flags are in place. There are questions about him. And for the Bengals, it just seems like an odd direction to go. Why, when things are finally going your way, when you’re finally earning some respect around the league, roll the dice on so many character cases?

Update: Bengals LB O’Dell Thurman will be suspended for the first four games of the season for a failed or missed drug test.