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Gordon suspension reduced to 10, 12 if convicted of DWI

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I think we need Glen to make up some Free Josh Gordon T-shirts.
 
Soda said:
1) If the NFL bargained for the 1 year banishment, followed by lifetime banishment for one other misjudgment after failed drug tests, it was either a negotiating tactic (door-in-face negotiating (google it)), or just plain in bad faith to make the league look macho. "NFLPA agreed to it!" isn't a good excuse.

1A) DeMaurice Smith and whoever makes him look at the CBA is really stupid for letting this slide. And that's being nice. I'm guessing the NFLPA had salient points they focused on with regard to the drug discipline program and probably never even looked at this part of its structure. Very difficult to go through all of the agreement, although with how much money is involved, they should. Either that, or they're geniuses and knew the NFL would get killed when the policy was applied.

2) I'm surprised that the Union didn't negotiate a real timeline for appeals processes. Every other CBA in the real world has "reasonable time frame" defined. This CBA should be no different.

3) No measures are being taken for rehabilitation? Just wash your hands of the player? No EAP program? And they wonder why they get sued by alum...

4) Josh Gordon is a certified idiot. He put himself around the people that put him in this position. That's also being nice. He probably just smoked to celebrate taking his last test... Not smart and I truthfully don't think he gives a shit. We'll see how that goes when he isn't paid for a year. Everything I just said in this point doesn't take away from the fact that the NFL's policy is in bad faith and is beyond stupid.
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While Goodell and the NFL deserve some flack for their handling, the Union really f'ed up as well. By the letter of the law, the NFL is correct in the suspension. How in the blue hell did the Union agree to a rule where the threshold is EXTREMELY more strict than every other known policy and where a guy can pass 70 drug tests, barely fail half a drug test on these ridiculous thresholds and still get banned for a year.
 
col63onel said:
While Goodell and the NFL deserve some flack for their handling, the Union really f'ed up as well. By the letter of the law, the NFL is correct in the suspension. How in the blue hell did the Union agree to a rule where the threshold is EXTREMELY more strict than every other known policy and where a guy can pass 70 drug tests, barely fail half a drug test on these ridiculous thresholds and still get banned for a year.
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My best guesses of that are that the Union completely passed over this part of the policy, cared more about other issues (like making Training Camp a joke), or they knew that this part of the policy would never work in court. This part of the policy only affects a very small faction of the employees of the NFL, so things like making Training Camp a joke and avoiding 18 games a season meant more to many more...
 
I spoke with my buddy who has friends on the team and originally told me about Gordon (if you're in S34, you would know). He said players treat the drug testing in the off season as an IQ test. It starts April 15th and goes all the way to the start of training camp. In that time YOU'RE TESTED ONCE. If you pass you're good for a year, if not you go into the program and tested every 3 days. While it sucks and the NFL handled it horribly, Gordon has to be smart and quit hanging out with his current friends.
 
Josh Gordon through his first two years has 137 receptions, 2451 yards and 14 TD's. For comparison's sake only four other players had at least 130 receptions, 2400 yards and 10 TD's through their first two years in the NFL: Randy Moss, Jerry Rice, Torry Holt and A.J. Green.

Now I guess you could say it's arbitrary numbers but fact is Gordon has had a record-setting start to his career. Needs to get his shyt together.
 
1.) No doubt Gordon is an idiot for putting himself in this situation & it's his own fault he's getting suspended. No doubting that & those who do are looking at this through brown & orange glasses.

2.) However, the NFL's handling of this has been absolutely terrible, especially since it seems like it's been a full year or nothing this entire time.

3.) I don't have a problem with the year suspension, had they announced it before training camp. They screwed the Browns royally.

4.) Hawkins & Austin will see even bigger roles, and so will Cameron, who we'll see in the slot more, I'd imagine.

5.) While Ray Rice didn't do the same thing and his was a 1st time offense, his offense was certainly 100x worse than Gordon's. And no, I don't care that the NFL doesn't have a clear set of rules on domestic violence. They should have set one here, plain & simple.
 
MoFlo said:
5.) While Ray Rice didn't do the same thing and his was a 1st time offense, his offense was certainly 100x worse than Gordon's. And no, I don't care that the NFL doesn't have a clear set of rules on domestic violence. They should have set one here, plain & simple.
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Goodell gave a public interview where he lauded Rice's attitude after the event occurred. While that is all well and good, why does Rice get a subjective break, but all of Gordon's passed tests plus the fact that he barely failed half a test give him no breaks.

I am not saying the NFL has it in for the Browns in particular, but I have a feeling if Gordon was a Steeler or Patriot, he wouldn't be suspended under the same circumstances.
 
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There's really just no way for the NFL to come out of this looking good. The league rules are there to cover the moral issues that the justice system can't. Goodell simply isn't a competent commissioner if he cant judge that one of these things breaks the laws of humanity and the other is a technicality. I'd argue that Josh's DUI was many more times worse than failing half a drug test for a drug not even illegal in every state, and wouldn't even have been positive in Olympic testing. This is what happens when there are no checks and balances. It's like a decree from an unstable monarch.
 
The larger issue here, IMO, is that Gordon has been on notice since he came into the league.

His issues are well documented in college. His issues are now well-documented in the NFL.

He has to be more aware of what he is doing. Plenty of other players are able to avoid these kinds of things.

The fact that he can't avoid these things means that Gordon has an addiction. You can become addicted to anything. There are mental addictions and physical addictions. Regardless, Gordon has an issue and needs help. I hope he gets it.

As for the suspension:

I don't have an issue with the suspension itself. The timing was pretty poor, given how close we are to the regular season. The announcement of the failed test was also poor given it happened during the draft, between Day 1 and Day 2 of the draft. While it was claimed upper management had knowledge of it beforehand, I'm pretty sure coaches did not.

Objectively, we needed a WR even if Gordon wasn't going to be suspended. One of the weakest positions of the team. Probably the weakest WR core in the NFL.

So I'm sure the Browns were looking to add talent there regardless of Gordon.

This situation is sort of like a hot girl saying there is a 2 percent chance she will go to prom with you. You get your hopes up because she hasn't said no, and then a couple days before prom, she finally says she won't go with you.

As of now, you obviously have less options than you did before. But realistically, you should have at least had a backup plan in place. In fact, the odds were so low, you should have found another date. So I don't really buy the notion the Browns were screwed by the NFL. Inconvenienced is probably the better term.

As for the outlook:

Our WR core will be extremely weak for the entire season.

Cameron will basically become a WR or a pass catcher as he notes on his Twitter bio.

Hawkins will really need to step up.

Burleson and Austin have a history of health concerns.

Tough to see this team scoring many TDs.

Go Cavs :chuckle:
 
While we are talking about Ray Ray... Didn't Big Ben get 6 games for being accused of rape? A dropped case all based on he said she said and 6 games. Ray Ray has some of the clearest video evidence.. Two games.


Head scratching at best.
 
Noonan said:
There are three big issues I have with all this:

1) The draconian suspension. This is a league that punishes wife beaters for two games and kids who get free tattoos in college for five games - while not testing for HGH. Roger Goodell has gotten involved in the morality business and he looks like a fucking idiot. On top of that: Please don't respond with "the players agreed to it." CBA's are incredibly complex, negotiated agreements and we have no idea what was offered in return for the players to accept a stupid weed policy when they would have looked incredibly dumb for fighting against it at a time when the public just wants to see some football. But we do know that Goodell pushed for it. This is a guy who wants to penalize players for using profanity on the field but won't say shit about one of his teams using the name Redskins.

2) The length of the appeal. I assume the league was trying to a) bury this on one of the slowest news weeks of the year and b) send a message that appeals will only result in delayed suspensions that will harm the team for not one, but two seasons. This is all about doubling down on the stupidity of bullet point one.

3) Not allowing the team to have access to Gordon during the suspension. This is clearly not about rehabbing a player. It is not about helping someone overcome a potential addiction. It is all about showing these guys on unguaranteed contracts how replaceable they are. It is indicative of the contempt Goodell has for anyone that dares to question how he operates while hiding behind bullshit boilerplate about protecting the NFL's "Shield."

If you can't tell, I think Roger Goodell is a jackass and the league is operating in a different decade.
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Gotta say I disagree on some of your points here...

1. The players agreed to it argument is a fair one. These negotiations are not the NFL owners and lawyers on one side of the table while 5 players with a combined wonderlic score of 12 are sitting on the other side of the table. The NFLPA is a very sophisticated organization and they have trained negotiators, lawyers, experts and staff that's sole responsibility was to get the best deal they could. Each word was gone over with a fine tooth comb. The owners didn't pull this Weed policy over their eyes. For them to accept this language they must have felt something else in the CBA was more important to fight over and therefore left this as a potential weak spot. That was a conscious effort. That decision is biting a lot of the members in the butt now and it's only getting worse.

2. Delaying the suspension certainly hurts the player but it also hurts the team as you say. However; the team has no say in whether a player challenges a decision or not. They are bystanders in this and unfortunately they get run over by the truck just as much as the player does only they don't do anything wrong. So the NFL is certainly not trying to send a message to the team by delaying the suspension because the team has nothing to do with the players decision to accept or appeal.

3. Full agreement on this point. If the NFL were interested in helping the substance abusers they wouldn't go with a cold turkey ban. They can prevent them from playing but don't prevent the teams from helping the player on a personal level. The Browns are not allowed to sponsor Gordon in his recovery. They can't aide him in anyway and that's a shame. It's simply the wrong thing to do as a human being.
 
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