Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams is nine days away from finishing his nine-game NFL suspension, and although he’s excited to get back on the field, he’s unhappy with what he says is unfair treatment from the league.
“I thought I was dealt an unfair deal,” Williams told USA Today. “There’s a lot of bitterness about it.”
Williams was suspended six games for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy by giving what the NFL said was something other than his own urine to the drug tester. He was then suspended an additional three games for his second drunk driving conviction. Williams, however, says that a lot of people hear about his suspension and assume it was for using steroids, which is untrue.
“For the rest of my career, I’ll have an asterisk beside my name, saying that I used performance enhancers or steroids or whatever,” Williams said. “People forget that when I was 16, I was 6-2, 225. I went to Miami at 233 [pounds]. My dad is huge, my mom competes in fitness and body competition – that’s the genetics that I have gotten passed on. It sucks because I’ll always be questioned on my ability and what I do as if I did steroids.”
But Williams declined to comment on that issue with his urine sample. And according to the NFL’s version of events, it sure sounds like Williams was trying to cheat the drug-testing system. The NFL says that when Williams was tested in both August and September of 2011, the sample he provided turned out to be something other than human urine. And in November of last year, the drug tester who showed up at the Broncos’ locker room to test Williams said he saw Williams holding a bottle near his waist while submitting the test, possibly to pour clean urine from someone else into his sample, and Williams then refused to give the tester the bottle.
Drug testing can’t work if the players are cheating the tests, and if Williams was suspended for cheating the tests, there’s nothing unfair about that.
