Browns Suspend Three After Arrests

Cleveland Brown Coach Butch Davis disciplined his players like he would his own children.

He grounded them.

Davis, sounding like a disappointed father, suspended defensive tackle Gerard Warren and fullback Mike Sellers for one game Wednesday following the players’ arrests.

Warren and Sellers will sit out Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

“We’re certainly disappointed,” said Davis, in his first year with the Browns. “The players are extremely disappointed. They let the team down and they let themselves down, their families.

“I’ve always looked at teams that I’ve coached as extended members of my family. Sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they don’t do the right thing all the time. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them, but sometimes you have to have tough love.”

Davis also suspended cornerback Lamar Chapman, already out for the season because of an injury.

Davis said the players were suspended for “conduct detrimental to the football team” and will be reinstated next week as long as they aren’t punished further by the NFL.

Sellers and Chapman pleaded innocent to felony drug-abuse charges Wednesday following their arrests after a traffic stop in Cleveland.

Warren, the club’s top draft pick this year, faces a charge of carrying an unlicensed firearm following his arrest outside a nightclub in Pittsburgh.

He was attending a party thrown by Steeler wide receiver Plaxico Burress.

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Indianapolis Colt running back Edgerrin James will be out for at least seven months because of his troublesome knee injury, causing him to miss part of next summer’s training camp.

The Colts said the two-time NFL rushing champion will have surgery this weekend to repair ligament damage in his left knee. He was put on injured reserve.

James missed three games after injuring the knee Oct. 25 at Kansas City. He started 38 consecutive games before the injury.

“Obviously when you lose a player of Edgerrin’s caliber, it’s a difficult road,” Indianapolis President Bill Polian said. “But that’s the nature of this game.”

The rehabilitation process is expected to take seven months and will keep James from participating in either of the Colts’ two off-season mini-camps, Polian said.

James won rushing titles in each of his first two NFL seasons and was on pace to contend for a third title when he injured the knee after being tackled awkwardly late in a game at Kansas City.

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Former Pro Bowl cornerback James Hasty left the Oakland Raiders, 12 days after signing with the club as a free agent.

Hasty made a tackle in last Sunday’s victory over San Diego, but apparently quit the team three days later.

“He decided he doesn’t want to play,” Oakland Coach Jon Gruden said.

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Less than a week after one Philadelphia Eagle player was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and two others were suspended for their involvement in the case, safety Damon Moore has been charged with animal abandonment.

Moore was charged with abandoning his three-month-old Rottweiler puppy in a soccer field near his home in Voorhees, N.J.

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Former Detroit Lion lineman Alonzo Spellman was sentenced to six months’ probation for charges stemming from a 1998 traffic stop in which police found a semiautomatic pistol in his car. Last month, the Lions waived Spellman, who played for Dallas the past two seasons.

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Carolina wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad will miss the Panthers’game Sunday against Atlanta because of sprains in both shoulders....Pittsburgh tight end Mark Bruener’s season officially ended when he was put on injured reserve following arthroscopic surgery on a torn rotator cuff.... Rod Smart, the running back whose “He Hate Me” nickname on the back of his jersey became a symbol of the defunct XFL, was added to Philadelphia’s 53-man active roster.