NFL Says, Get Tested or Get Suspended!

16 Aug, 2016

The NFL will suspend indefinitely the four active players at the center of the league’s performance-enhancing drug probe if they don’t provide interviews to the league by Aug. 25.

Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison, Green Bay Packers linebackers Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers and free-agent linebacker Mike Neal will be suspended beginning Aug. 26 if they haven’t cooperated, NFL senior vice president of labor policy and league affairs Adolpho Birch told the NFL Players Association in a letter Monday that was first obtained by USA TODAY Sports.

The suspensions would be for conduct detrimental, and separate from any possible discipline the players would face under the league’s drug policies, Birch’s letter said. Each player would remain suspended until he has participated in an interview with the league’s investigators, after which NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell “will determine whether and when the suspension should be lifted.”

Allegations that the four players were linked to performance-enhancing drugs were first raised in the Al Jazeera America documentary The Dark Side. The NFL Players Association previously stated that affidavits submitted by the four players in July constituted reasonable cooperation, but the league maintained its position.

Birch’s letter says Neal lied in his statement, which “includes an assertion that is demonstrably false” — hammering home the need for interviews. Neal’s initial letter said he had never violated the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs before, but he was suspended in 2012 for an infraction. A revised statement was provided to correct that section.

The union also argued that players should not be required to cooperate with the investigation because Charlie Sly, the former anti-aging clinic who implicated the players in hidden-camera footage in the documentary, later recanted his claims.

The NFL announced in July that it had closed its separate investigation into former Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, whom Sly also implicated in recorded conversations. The union no longer represents the retired Manning, but the league said he and his wife, Ashley, “were fully cooperative with the investigation and provided both interviews and access to all records sought by the investigators.”

The league has established precedent in punishing players for non-compliance alone, as then-Vikings quarterback Brett Favre was fined $50,000 in 2010 for “failure to cooperate … in a forthcoming manner” in a league investigation into the alleged sending of an illicit photos to a New York Jets employee in 2008.

USAToday 

Image jpeazy10 twitter

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