Clay Matthews, Julius Peppers and James Harrison will meet with Roger Goodell and avoid serving an NFL-mandated suspension.
The stand off between the Green Bay Packers and Roger Goodell is over… for now.
The NFLPA announced that James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers and both Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers of the Packers will meet with Commissioner Goodell and avoid being suspended by the league. Former Packers LB Mike Neal (and current free agent) has declined to grant Goodell an interview.
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The four NFL players were named in the Al Jazeera report from 2015 that cited that they used an anti-aging clinic in Indianapolis to obtain HGH. This is the same report that alleged similar accusations towards Peyton Manning, as well as MLB players Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman.
The NFL announced months ago that they would investigate Al Jazeera’s claims. The retired Manning granted the NFL an interview and the league has already cleared him. The four active players refused to meet with the league. Earlier this week, the NFL announced the players would be suspended indefinitely if they didn’t comply with the interview.
After a couple more days of speculation, the NFLPA buckled and informed the NFL that the players would indeed meet with Goodell. Neal, who is currently a free agent, declined and reports are that he may challenge Goodell’s suspension in the courts.
For Chicago Bears fans and other Packers’ rivals, any hope that Matthews and Peppers get suspended for PED use this year is almost nil. The NFL wasn’t able to confirm if Manning took HGH, and Manning’s PR team admitted that his wife received packages from the anti-aging clinic.
The NFL does nothing quickly. After these interviews, even if they do suspect violations, they will continue to investigate and any suspensions wouldn’t be levied until 2017. Odds are, the NFL will not be able to link anything in the Al Jazeera report into anything concrete and will clear the players at some point this season.
My belief is always where there is smoke, there is fire. While many people have spent plenty of time bashing the Al Jazeera report for being flimsy, if anyone actually watched the documentary, you would see the report is far more substantial than has been reported by US outlets.
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The NFL will most likely clear Matthews, Peppers and Harrison because they will lack enough concrete evidence to suspend them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough there to know that most likely there was some type of PED violation from these players.
What does that mean? Other than Bears fans having ammo for bar arguments with Packers fans, not much. This whole story will end up being much ado about nothing, but that doesn’t mean that Bears fans don’t know what’s going on up there in Green Bay.
Bill Zimmerman is an editor and featured writer for FanSided‘s BearGogglesOn. Like his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter for more news and interaction.