Saints safety Kenny Vaccaro apologized for letting down his teammates, but admitted he didn’t realize he was doing something against the rules when he took Adderall, failed a PED test and was suspended for four games.
Vaccaro told Mike Triplett of ESPN.com that he wasn’t trying to take the stimulant for performance-enhancing reasons, unless you mean trying to enhance his weekend. He said he took it during the Saints bye weekend, when he was in Dallas watching his brother play in the Texas-Oklahoma game.
“To be honest, I just made a mistake,” Vaccaro said. “I was just tired and I really wasn’t aware of the whole rule thing. The game’s early in the morning, the state fair was going on. I never took it before. I just did it, and it was just a dumb mistake by me, to be honest. And then I came back in Monday and had a random PED test. But that’s the rules, and I take full responsibility.
“It wasn’t worth it to get a little bit of energy to watch a game to come back and get a random PED test on a Monday. I mean, people can say it was unlucky, but I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. But I don’t take it, I don’t have any problems. I just wanted to be up and alert. I don’t take Adderall ever.”
Vaccaro said he never felt excluded from the team while missing the last four games, but that coach Sean Payton made it clear to him the game wasn’t going to wait for him.
“He said, ‘This is how this league is. As soon as one person’s out, it just keeps rolling.’ And it’ll blow you away, just the magnitude of it. The train never stops for no one,” Vaccaro said. “And that’s the biggest thing I got from the whole suspension is that I’ll never let this happen again. I felt like I let my teammates down. I thought I was playing at a really high level the last five games before I got suspended. Probably my best year, and I only played 11 games, statistically.”
Vaccaro was playing some of his best football at the time of the suspension, and the Saints defense was playing less terribly than it had in the past. And if he’s serious about being more diligent and conscientious as a player, the Saints should benefit from his return.
