The agent for Colts outside linebacker Robert Mathis is criticizing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after Mathis was suspended four games for violating the league’s policy on performance enhancing substances.
“The league and Commissioner Goodell have taken a stance that puts Robert under some strict scrutiny,” agent Hadley Englehard said on SportsCenter. “That is really unjust and unfair.”
According to Englehard, Mathis simply took a fertility drug because he and his wife decided they wanted to give his mother another grandchild after learning that she has cancer. That fertility drug (which Englehard did not name, but is reportedly Clomid) is on the list of banned substances, but Englehard said an exception should be made for a player who took the drug for a medical reason, without realizing it was banned. Englehard said Goodell had access to Mathis’s medical data and to a sworn statement from Mathis’s doctor but was unwilling to make any kind of exception.
“We have given him all the medical data,” Englehard said. “We are just amazed that the commissioner and the NFL have put this kind of punishment on Robert.”
Englehard acknowledged that “There’s not much recourse left,” and Mathis is apparently going to have to accept the four-game suspension. Even if he doesn’t like it.