After missing four games due to a substance abuse suspension last season, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Rolando McClain decided to double down this year. He got busted again and this time it will cost him 10 games.
McClain won’t be alone on his couch in Dallas. If he wants he can be visited by defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, who lost his appeal on a four-game suspension. With defensive end Randy Gregory already suspended four games for the same reason, they can just throw a party.
3 of Cowboys' front 7 have been suspended.
Rolando McClain: 10 gms
DeMarcus Lawrence: 4 gms
Randy Gregory: 4 gms pic.twitter.com/H1Mxv4KPQr— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) June 30, 2016
McClain has reclaimed his career with the Cowboys, if not his discipline. After being out of the NFL for a year, he signed with Dallas in 2014 and had an outstanding season. He followed that up with a solid 2015 where he posted 50 tackles, two sacks, three passes defended and one interception return for a touchdown. McClain was a big reason the Cowboys were able to move Sean Lee to outside linebacker.
The suspension really hurts Lawrence, who broke out last season starting 13 games, recording 35 tackles, a safety, one forced fumble and eight sacks. With Gregory already out, the team really needed Lawrence to pick up where he left off in 2015 with the pass rush. Now the Cowboys will be searching for anyone to pressure the quarterback in the first month of the season. Lawrence was a second round pick out of Boise State in 2013.
Cowboys get bad news on Jaylon Smith
For a while it looked like Cowboys second-round pick Jaylon Smith might actually get on the field in 2016. Late Wednesday night those hopes were pretty much dashed. According to ESPN, Smith’s nerve damage in his knee shows “no significant improvement.”
#Cowboys confident in @thejaylonsmith eventually playing. "He's going to have a 10-year career; we just don't know when it will start."
— Ed Werder (@EdwerderRFA) June 29, 2016
Smith was a consensus Top Five pick in the draft until he tore his ACL and MCL in the Fiesta Bowl. In his final year at Notre Dame Smith had 115 tackles, nine for a loss, five passes defended, two forced fumbles, one fumble recovery and one sack.
Darren McFadden denies cellphone story
Of all the ways for the oft-inured McFadden to go down, a dropped cellphone kind of takes the cake. McFadden supposedly tore up his elbow trying to catch his iPhone after he butterfingered it in his kitchen. He says that’s not true.
“I just slipped down and landed on my elbow,”McFadden told ESPN. “My phone was in my hand and so people kind of put that story out.”
The “people” in question was McFadden’s own running backs coach, Gary Brown. McFadden now says he slipped on the concrete ledge of a swimming pool.
Jets’ Richardson must sit a game
Resist arrest? Lead the cops on a high-speed chase like you’re one of the Duke boys? That’ll cost you a whole football game. Such was the punishment levied by the NFL Thursday to Sheldon Richardson, who pulled his own Fast and the Furious audition last January.
Richardson was able to skip any jail time for $1,050 fine and 100 hours of community service. The NFL was more lenient than that. He was arrested in St. Louis last January after 143 m.p.h. chase through the suburbs. When the cops caught him, they smelled marijuana and found a loaded handgun.
This is what Richardson posted on his instagram in response to the suspension.
You live and you learn? You pulled a Bandit through a cul de sac with a glock sliding around on your floorboard for God’s sake.
Richardson missed four games himself last season for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy.
JPP’s fireworks PSA hits the net
With the Fourth of July just a week away, Jason Pierre-Paul’s fireworks safety public service announcement hit the airwaves and the net Thursday. Last year Pierre-Paul nearly blew off his right hand and ended his NFL career with a fireworks accident on Independence Day.
The explosion did cost JPP a finger and mangled his entire right hand. Last year he played under a one-year franchise tag with the Giants. He appeared in eight games and was hampered by a giant protective wrap he was forced to wear over his injured hand. He finished with 21 tackles, two fumble recoveries and a sack. Pierre-Paul isn’t expected to wear any protective hand gear this season.
