**UPDATE 7:17 pm: Manish Mehta is now confirming on his Twitter page that he did report OLD news. Says Mehta:
I spoke to a rep from the NFL Network. The bottom line crawl was last yr's ESPN feed that was shown during rebroadcast of Vikings-Bears gm.
Crawl was NOT live. So Channing Crowder is NOT out for year with foot injury. (That news referred to last yr's injury). Hope that clarifies.
It clarifies alright. It clarifies that, like NY Jet fans, even NY Jet reporters aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
**UPDATE 6:58 pm: It looks like this report by Mehta was a false alarm. The game he was watching when he saw the report scroll on the bottom was an ESPN Monday Night game from December 28 of last year - the same day we found out Crowder was out for the rest of the season with a right foot injury. Mehta must have got ESPN's old bottom line confused with NFLN's bottom line news scroll. So basically, there's nothing to see here. Let's all move along.
This is a very strange story that probably isn't over just yet. Here's the breakdown.
ProFootballTalk cites a tweet from Manish Mehta, the Jets' beat writer for the NY Daily news, that Dolphins LB Channing Crowder is out for the season. Mehta cites a report from the Associated Press.
The original tweet by Mehta came about an hour ago. But since then, Mehta has removed that tweet from his Twitter account and has replaced it with the following tweet made about 20 minutes ago:
1 hr ago, NFL Network's bottom line said Channing Crowder (foot) was out 4 season per Associated Press report. That news doesn't appear now.
That is followed by another tweet from Mehta:
I haven't seen Channing Crowder news on wire. So I'll assume he's not out for season with foot injury.
As of now, there is absolutely nothing on NFL.com about an injury to Crowder. So that makes me think that this was an incorrect report - perhaps an error by the NFL Network team. Maybe they accidentally ran the old AP story from last year when Channing's season ended early with that foot injury.
For now, though, it doesn't appear like Crowder suffered any kind of set back or new injury. And unless we hear otherwise, expect Channing on the field in less than three weeks for training camp.