New York, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – The NFL and the NFL Players Association announced Wednesday an agreement to a revised steroids policy.<\/p>\n
“The NFL and NFL Players Association have reached agreement on wide-ranging improvements to their policy on performance enhancing substances that include the use of third-party arbitration appeals of positive tests and implementation of testing for human growth hormone within the next few weeks,” a joint statement said.<\/p>\n
Information on HGH testing procedures will be distributed to teams and players this week, with testing scheduled to begin by the end of September.<\/p>\n
Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker, Dallas Cowboys defensive back Orlando Scandrick and Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey are now eligible to return to play this week as a result of the new policy. All three players had received four-game suspensions for testing positive for substances that now will be covered under the substance abuse policy.<\/p>\n
Per the statement, the two parties are nearing an agreement on changes to the substance abuse policy.<\/p>\n
A player will be suspended without pay up to six games for a first violation under the steroid policy. The number of games will be based on the nature of the violation.<\/p>\n
The use of a diuretic or masking agent will draw a two-game ban and the use of a steroid, stimulant, HGH or other banned substance will result in a four-game suspension. If there’s evidence of an attempt to manipulate a test, the player will receive a six-game suspension.<\/p>\n
A second violation calls for a 10-game suspension, while a third violation will result in a ban for a minimum of two years.<\/p>\n
Players who test positive for banned stimulants in the offseason will no longer be suspended. They will be referred to the substance abuse program.<\/p>\n
However, a positive test for banned stimulants during the season still results in a four-game suspension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – The NFL and the NFL Players Association announced Wednesday an agreement to a revised steroids policy. “The NFL and NFL Players Association have reached agreement on wide-ranging improvements to their policy on performance enhancing substances that include the use of third-party arbitration appeals of positive tests and implementation of testing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[150,149,148,139,98,138],"class_list":["post-23606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-cowboys","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-rams","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-rams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}