Every week the Browns’ story just keeps getting crazier and crazier. This is better than fiction. Two more twists in this twisted tale. First, linebacker D’Qwell Jackson has been placed on the IR. He’s one of the few highlights on this team defensively. He leads the team in tacklesths year, and topped the whole league in that category last year. The Browns’ defense was already nothing to write home about, and this certainly won’t help. The other news is that Cleveland has been overrun with a flu bug, and it has affected six starters so far, including nose tackle Shaun Rogers, one of the other few defensive highlights. The players – 12 in total – missed practice on Wednesday, and could miss more – especially if it turns out to be H1N1. This puts a serious kink in the team’s preparations for Sunday’s game against the Giants. Given that they were already in deep in that game this is bad news for them – and entertaining for us.

Buffalo is another team facing injury problems in key positions this week. QB Trent Edwards went down with a concussion last week, and has yet to practice this week, so he is unlikely to start on Sunday at Carolina. That means that Ryan Fitzgerald will likely get the nod. Fitzgerald played much of the game last week and the results were mixed – on one hand he completed just 10 of 25 passes and threw an interception, but he also threw for a TD and led the three scoring drives that led to the win. Given how much Edwards has struggled this year there really aren’t that many reasons to panic or adjust your perceptions of this team regardless of who starts.

I can’t decide what to think about the Adalius Thomas situation in New England. He was a healthy scratch last week for the Titans game despite the team being so short at linebacker that they brought Junior Seau back. Thomas says that he is over the situation and back at work, but he also says he hasn’t yet talked to Bill Belichick and doesn’t know why he was benched or what his current status is. Thomas hasn’t been as good as he should be in New England, and he definitely seems to be in his declining years. This just doesn’t seem like a very Patriot-like way of dealing with a situation, so I’m curious as to how it could impact the team. Like they didn’t already have enough question marks surrounding them.