As you may recall, five NFL players were slapped with respective four-game suspensions late last season -- though they never served them while their legal claims were being heard in court. Friday, a federal judge dismissed the claims of the players -- Kevin Williams and Pat Williams of the Vikings, Charles Grant and Will Smith of the Saints, and unsigned Deuce McAllister. Those five players -- well, four if McAllister doesn't sign somewhere -- will be forced to sit out the first quarter of the season for their respective teams.
This is a big blow to both the Saints and Vikings, but it's especially big for the Vikes. They look to be in a very competitive division with the Packers and Bears. Losing the Williams boys from the middle is a significant blow to their dominant run defense -- which was the best in the NFL last season, largely because of these two men clogging the middle.
They don't have a tough early schedule (opening with the Browns, Lions and Niners), but if they are tripped up in one or two of those three games and then lose in Week 4 to the Packers, they'll be off to a disappointing start for a team with such high aspirations.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-24-2009 @ 12:07AM
globalsetback said...
this suspension is crazy it wasnt posted on the ban this
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5-24-2009 @ 12:48AM
TW said...
How is the suspension crazy? It doesn't matter if it was on the banned list or not. It wasn't on the list of approved substances either. The rule says that the player is responsible for anything he takes that isn't on the list of approved subbstances.
5-30-2009 @ 4:34PM
Anton said...
This is a bad call, the NFL is wrong. If you read the story it states "league officials knew a supplement called StarCaps contained a banned diuretic back in 2006 and did not specifically notify players or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." These players did nothing wrong, they did everything right. It was a legal substance they took. Here is another quote from the story.."the Williamses had no trace of steroids in their systems and evidence shows a hotline for players to get information on such issues gave out false information about the supplement, and told players it was not banned."
Sp what exactly did they do wrong? The NFL hotline said it was not banned even though the NFL knew it since 2006. The NFL should sus[end the league officials who knew this information.
You be the judge, would you suspend them?
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