The NFLPA sent a letter to the NFL this week demanding “sufficient credible evidence” from the league if they want to interview four players implicated as users of performance-enhancing drugs in a report by Al-Jazeera America last year.
The league responded to that letter on Thursday and they predictably took a different view of the matter. Lindsay Jones of USA Today reports that NFL senior vice president of labor affairs Adolpho Birch sent a letter to the union calling their stance regarding interviews with Steelers linebacker James Harrison, Packers linebacker Clay Matthews, Packers linebacker Julius Peppers and ex-Packers linebacker Mike Neal “fundamentally at odds with the CBA” when it comes to the standard the league needs to meet to begin an investigation.
“While we readily agree that such evidence is required to support the imposition of discipline, nothing in the CBA or the policy imposes such a requirement before possible violations of the policy may be investigated,” Birch wrote. “Obviously, the standard that you advocate -- that the league cannot undertake an investigation unless and until it has established the facts and claims to be investigated -- would simply ensure that there would be no investigations at all. For the same reason, we are under no obligation to disclose all evidence uncovered thus far as a condition to interviewing the players, which would clearly compromise the investigation.”
Birch added that active NFL players have an “obligation to cooperate with league investigations and may be disciplined for failing to do so.”
NFLPA spokesman George Atallah told Jones that the NFLPA had not received the letter yet and therefore had no comment.