2014 NFL Off-Season Thread

[elcheato]

Is Jeff Smoker still alive? 

 

[Teagz]

Is Jeff Smoker still alive? 

Sources say yes, maybe.

 

[jonathanlambert33]

holy hell

 

[jonathanlambert33]

The Panthers signed Roman Harper AND Thomas DeCoud? It's like they're trying to take two safeties from their rivals who weren't good enough to stick with their previous teams and make like some super bad duo on purpose.

 

[elcheato]

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/493882784650649600
 
This is coming just after Mort reported that Gordon could win on a technicality.
 
HMMM 

 

[Pugz]

brees was drug tested after he said he could play until he was 45 lol

 

[jonathanlambert33]

Drug tested twice in two days.

 

[jonathanlambert33]

Also hasn't talked to Goodell in three years.

 

[TTN2810]

So wait, is Gordon's appeal/the technicality reducing the ban to say 8 games or whatever, or have the ban lifted overall and he can play in all 16?

 

[elcheato]

No clue, but I don't expect him to be gone all year. I think at most he gets 8. That's a complete guess though

 

[elcheato]

 
 
Gordon’s appeal focuses on disparity between “A” and “B” bottle tests
Posted by Mike Florio on July 29, 2014, 2:07 PM EDT

With the Josh Gordon appeal hearing set for Friday and with Gordon hiring (as Adam Schefter reported last night) the same lawyer who helped Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman avoid a four-game suspension for violation of the PED policy in 2012, Gordon presumably has a case that holds more water than the average bong.
Gordon possibly does, especially if the same spirit of lenience that helped Ray Rice receive a suspension of only two games for knocking out his fiancée applies in any way to Gordon.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Gordon landed in Stage III of the program last year as part of a negotiated two-game suspension for the use of cough syrup that contained codeine.  Once in Stage III, a player never leaves.  And he must pass up to 10 drug tests per month.
According to the source, Gordon has passed at least 70 drug tests.  One test barely generated a positive.  And but for the 50-50 luck of the draw, it would have been a negative.
Urine samples routinely are split into two bottles, the “A” bottle and the “B” bottle.  If the “A” bottle generates a positive result, the “B” bottle is tested.  Amazingly, the “B” bottle doesn’t have to independently show a violation.  Instead, the substance abuse policy states that the “‘B’ bottle Test need only show that the substance, revealed in the ‘A’ bottle Test, is evident to the ‘limits of detection’ to confirm the results of the ‘A’ bottle Test.”
In English, close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and “B” bottles.
For Gordon, the “A” bottle showed a concentration of 16 ng/ml, only one nanogram per milliliter above the limits of 15.  The “B” bottle showed a concentration of 13.6 ng/ml — less than the threshold.
But because the “A” bottle was labeled “A” and not “B” and because the “B” bottle was labeled “B” and not “A”, the end result is a positive and a minimum one-year banishment from the NFL.  Flip the bottles when it’s time to apply the labels, and Gordon isn’t facing a suspension.
Setting aside (for now) my lingering concerns about the NFL policing the use of marijuana by players, the Draconian provisions of a program that subjects a player to up to 10 tests per month and will remove a Stage III player from the workforce for at least a full year if he failed a single test over the balance of his career, and the NFL’s apparent unwillingness to subject Colts owner Jim Irsay to this same testing protocol and standard, Josh Gordon will be treated extremely unfairly if the policy is strictly applied to him as it is written.
All because the bottle that tested at 16 ng/ml was labeled with an “A and the bottle that tested at 13.6 ng/ml was labeled with a “B”.
The NFL clearly got it wrong with Ray Rice.  The NFL has a chance to get it right with Josh Gordon.

Too early to get excited? 

 

[TTN2810]

The NFL gets everything wrong, always. Just because it's them I wouldn't, man. They dumb.
 
I read a funny comment on that article where a guy said if only he had knocked out the urine sample guy, he'd only have gotten 2 games

 

[TTN2810]

PFT

Under the current policy as previously negotiated by the NFL and the NFLPA, arguments based on the disparity between Gordon’s “A” bottle and “B” bottle and whether the average concentration (based on the split sample) of 14.8 ng/ml in the two bottles came from second-hand smoke won’t matter.  A strict, literal application of the policy will result in Gordon being suspended for a full year, during which time he’ll be completely banished from his team and required to continue to pass up to 10 tests per months, or he won’t be reinstated.
 
If any notion of fairness and common sense is applied to the appeal process, Gordon won’t be suspended at all.  Especially since the NFL apparently hasn’t and won’t subject Colts owner Jim Irsay to the same kind of rigorous testing for an admitted addiction that, if it’s not cured, eventually would result in Irsay being kicked out of the league for at least a year, too.
 

 

[TTN2810]

It' so funny how stupid people get pre draft. 
 
Every second thing I read was how Teddy was falling and all these issues with his pro day and what not.
 
Now he's looking fantastic and "he should have been picked higher."
 
YES, he should have. That's why you go off tape and not all the other stupid pre draft stuff. It's ridiculous.
 
I'm glad he's doing well. I mean I'm thrilled the Titans ended up with Mett but I would have been stoked with Teddy too.

 

[TTN2810]

Interesting post by a Reddit user who claims to be a chemist, where he's explains why the discrepancy between bottle A and bottle B is moot, and the way the NFL does the whole A-B thing actually isn't flawed.
 
http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/2c5u14/regarding_the_a_and_b_bottle_tests_on_josh_gordon/
 
Looks like Gordon is screwed.
 
As for Gordon's other defense, looks like it won't work either.
 
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11286008/nfl-issues-warning-ahead-josh-gordon-appeal
 
Also:
 
Rotoworld

Harold Henderson will hear Josh Gordon's appeal on Friday.

It's not good news for Gordon. A source previously told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that "you would have a better chance of convincing your teacher your dog ate your homework" than trying to get Henderson to buy a second-hand smoke defense. Commissioner Roger Goodell will not be at the hearing, but is expected to meet with Gordon sometime in the next week.

 
Yeah.. he's done lol.

 

[elcheato]

Without looking at the post, I call bullshit on that chemist. If they had labeled his test of 13 with A on it, he doesn't get suspended. That seems flawed. 

 

[Giantmetfan07]

Such a power move. Almost have to respect it. 
 

 

[TTN2810]

Without looking at the post, I call bullshit on that chemist. If they had labeled his test of 13 with A on it, he doesn't get suspended. That seems flawed. 

That's why you read the post lol. It talks about EXACTLY what you're mad about. Florio totally mislead everyone about that whole thing.
 
If the NFL checks cup B only AFTER the first one was flagged, which reports say is the protocol, there will have been enough time for the metabolite to decompose to show the lower level, when in fact originally it would have been the same value as cup A. That's why they don't care if it's the same value or not, only that it's there in cup B. The point is, if they had tested cup B first, there would not have been that time for the metabolite to decompose, and it would have yielded the same result as cup A.
 
So that's why you should take the time to read something before you brush it off.. don't be biased brother.
 
It's stupid that the NFL uses 15 as it's number instead of 40, and it's stupid they care about pot to begin with, but the testing aspect, aka Gordon's defense, isn't one of the NFL's many flaws.
 
Florio was talking about something he is not trained in and got it wrong, giving fans false hope. 
 
Gordon's only hope is if the NFL realized their rules are stupid, or that Gordon shouldn't be suspended longer than Rice. And the NFL doesn't admit it's own mistakes lol.