Kevin Jones was the guy I was sure was going to be a stud. He seemed to have the whole package.
This is revisionist history. Every source across the board had Charles Rogers rated above Andre Johnson. I only spent part of my time at the Lions board back then and spent most of my time in a general NFL fan message board and everyone there thought Rogers was the higher rated prospect, and time and time again won “offensive rookie of the year” when we put up polls on what we thought was going to happen…before and after the draft.
People tend to forget that Andre Johnson actually spent much of the mock season between picks 7 to 11. Weeks before the draft Mel Kiper got some inside knowledge on what the Texans were going to do, changed his mock to give them Andre Johnson, and other mocks followed suit after that.
Like you said, its a HUGE red flag to have drug test issues at the combine. The way the NFL has set up its weed policy, its just meant to expose the addicts. Starting with the combine, where you know exactly when you are going to be tested. Then, during the year, you also know almost exactly when you are going to be tested every year. And once you’ve been tested, you know they aren’t going to come back and give you a random (which is different than the PED policy)…so you can literally smoke weed all you want until the following year when its testing time again. Anyone who enjoys weed but isn’t addicted to it clearly can spend most of their career smoking it and never get caught. Which is how the program is designed.
Going back to Rogers, his sample was “diluted.” I know players and their agents want to say it was just watered down, but it typically flags it when a weed smoker takes special pills to try to dilute the sample below the threshold and doesn’t tend to register when the guy simply tries to hydrate on water.
Yeah, he definitely should have gone the Whizzenator route…
Roy’s issue was he ran really crappy routes. He rounded them off, didn’t explode out of cuts, ran the wrong depth, etc. He got to the point where Romo simply couldn’t trust him to be where he was supposed to be, and he’d simply look someone else. In 2009 he only caught 38 balls out of 86 targets or something like that. Absolutely pitiful.
Didn’t we run the same offense Andre Ware ran in college?
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It’s not revisionist history for me, but yes they had Chuck ahead of Johnson…then you added Prop 48 to Known Druggie Obviousness to Diluted Sample
Big ol bucket of Nope, beginning to end for me.
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Delmas & Pettigrew. Thought they were two solid picks.
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You sure about that? I’ve heard several NFL players complaining about the frequency of the random tests during the season.
To be fair, Delmas was. He just couldn’t stay healthy.
That’s really insightful; I had no idea. Thanks, Wes.
No wonder he needed to make some insane catches, lol.
Pepelepew looked pretty good in 2011, though. I thought the dropoff to 15 targets a year was rather unmerited. Fewer, yes, but ignoring the guy in the pass game completely because you got Ebron? That made no sense. Then going to him on that play in Dallas after ignoring him all year? Total head scratcher.
I still wonder what it was that got him sidelined. Attitude?
Yeah. I remember being fairly pro Rogers until I saw an interview with him before the draft. The interviewer asked him about the Lions possibly drafting him and his answer was, “aww man. I don’t want to play for two losers” (the other being MSU)
From that moment on I hated him and was pissed we drafted him
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I was miffed we drafted Delmas over Chung. The way he tossed his body around in his film had injury written all over it
And I liked Chung more from his time in Oregon, I watched a lot of those games. I remember having long fights on Mlive with someone about it
Ahh the good old days
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I was upset with Pettigrew from Day 1 because Mack was sitting there. I also thought Delmas would be OK but being hurt and playing hurt limited his effectiveness.
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Oh wow, I missed that.
Be sure to separate the two types of testing. There’s PED testing and recreational drug testing.
PED testing - This is random. And as some players have complained, sometimes its “not so random.” Like, players will put in a monster performance one game and suddenly they find themselves getting “randomly” drug tested right after. A single violation gets you suspended immediately. A handful of players have found a way to weasel out of the automatic suspension.
Recreational drug testing - This is a totally separate program. For guys who are “clean,” the testing starts around April with the latest tests coming somewhere around August. Clean guys only get tested once. If you test clean, you will not be tested again until the following April. You only get randoms for recreational drugs if you’ve failed a test, missed a test or got into some situation that’s drug or alcohol related outside of the NFL testing (DUI, got caught in a crackhouse, etc). So as long as you aren’t an addict, you know when you need to stop smoking and then smoke all you want after the test. Those that are caught get put into the substance abuse program, where they start to get random tests for recreational drugs. We don’t hear about these people, because unlike the PED testing you don’t get suspended the first time. I don’t think you even get suspended the 2nd time. I believe its the 3rd violation where you finally get suspended and people suddenly hear about it. But if you are in the program, if you test clean for long enough (I think its 2 years or something like that), you get put back into the “clean” pool and once again know when the tests are coming.
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Fair enough; and a great breakdown of the rules. I appreciate the in-depth clarification!
With a quarter of the league playing in states where it is legal, curious to see how this shakes out in the long run. I think that nothing will change until its legal on a federal level. Its not like the NFL can alter rules just because of where a team resides. But the testing may become more relaxed on a league level. And these suspensions may just disappear and turn into fines. Im good with that.
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Funny story.
A main event WWE wrestler is hypermobile, so he gets hurt frequently. He uses cannabis for it, despite the fact that they fine for that. So what does he do? He pays an entire year of fines in advance LOL.
They are already relaxed on the testing. And you have to fail a series of tests before you are finally suspended.
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