Washington's talented and troubled pass-rush specialist Junior Galette went down late in practice Wednesday with what, according to NFL Media's Albert Breer, is a season-ending tear of his Achiiles' tendon.
Washington’s Junior Galette out for the season with torn Achilles’s tendon
Another day of training camp, another major NFL injury
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
The injury comes at the end of a year that is, even by NFL standards, a little crazy.
Last September, Galette signed a four-year contract extension with the Saints, worth a guaranteed $23 million. He was named a defensive captain in New Orleans, played all 16 games and recorded 10 sacks. Despite all that, the Saints are eating $12.1 million of cap space to make sure he never plays for them again.
Why?
Well, according to stories shared by anonymous teammates, Galette’s new money turned him immediately into football’s worst teammate. There were reports of vicious fights with fellow Saints, all of which added to an ugly culture festering in the New Orleans defensive locker room.
After two domestic-violence issues in 2015 -- charges were dropped after a January incident, but a video of a second incident in June reportedly shows him hitting a woman with a belt -- the Saints had had enough. They released him, and he didn’t take it well.
In a spectacular case of bridge burning, Galette and his girlfriend used Twitter to savage Sean Payton, the Saints organization and his former teammates. Payton was called a drunk and a Percocet abuser, and it went downhill from there.
Luckily for Galette, this is still the NFL, so none of that was enough to keep Washington from signing him to a contract a week later. But now his season is likely over before it began, and he won’t get a chance to prove whether Washington was right to take the chance on him.
According to Fox Sports’ Mike Garafolo, the injury will also be quite costly to Galette, who was on a split contract that only paid $413,000 if he got hurt in the preseason, down from his full salary of $745,000. Making the money more painful is that Garafolo is reporting that the Saints are claiming Galette breached his contract with them, meaning they don’t have to pay him the $1.25 million they owed him this year.
All in all, what Galette thought would be nearly $2 million in 2015 income is now down to less than a quarter of that.
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