[Drake]

Interesting, Bernard Pollard was released because he was a major issue?

This departure, unlike that of Paul Kruger and Dannell Ellerbe, was clearly and comfortably the choice of John Harbaugh and the Ravens organization. In simple terms, Pollard’s constant complaining and locker room blow-ups finally caught up to him.

With the good, though, came a lot of bad. Pollard was a troublesome figure in the clubhouse, which is why he won’t be around in Baltimore next season.
“This wasn’t all about quality of play,” a source said on Wednesday after the news about Pollard’s termination went public. ”It was about locker room tranquility and chemistry.”

While there wasn’t one single incident that doomed Pollard, a series of friction-filled events contributed to the club finally saying “enough is enough”. The most notable of those was a post-game blow-up in Washington where the hard-hitting safety openly bashed linebacker Josh Bynes in front of the entire team and within earshot of several media members who were in the vicinity of the locker room setting up for post-game interviews.
“It was completely uncalled for,” said a 2012 teammate. ”From a team standpoint, the last thing we needed that day was to have one guy pitting himself against someone else. And to pick on Josh like that? It was wrong.”

Pollard’s role in the bye-week practice fiasco is well known by now. When Harbaugh suggested the team practice in pads on Wednesday before letting the team have off for the rest of the week, Pollard reacted angrily and rallied several teammates to demand a lighter, easier practice session. To his credit, Harbaugh took the high road and gave in, deciding, apparently, that the battle wasn’t worth winning when the season was still very much in the balance.

“He was always complaining about something,” the teammate remembered. ”Nothing was ever right in Bernard’s eyes. After a while it got kind of old. And a lot of guys in the locker are John Harbaugh fans. Bernard was very anti-John and open about it. He didn’t really hide it.”

Penalties and unnecessary roughness flags also plagued the hard-hitting safety. The former teammate cited one penalty in particular that unsettled the locker room. “Before the Indianapolis game, Harbs made a point of reminding us all about the late hits and the fact that we couldn’t afford any crucial penalties in a playoff game. With six or seven minutes left (editor’s note: It was actually with 3:46 to play) in the game, Pollard cracked Reggie Wayne for no reason at all. Right there, in front of the official, he just cracked him. We looked at each other like, ‘Is this guy serious or what?’”

“As a player, when you see another guy in the locker room trying to undermine the coach on a regular basis, you sort of wonder when the coach is going to take control,” said Pollard’s now-former teammate. ”It does become the coach vs. the player, ultimately. And we all wait around to see who’s going to win. It’s an unnecessary distraction if it builds up, which this did.”

The distraction is moving on to his fourth team in eight seasons.

http://wnst.net/baltimore-ravens/pollard/