Chargers tight end Antonio Gates took some time out from preparing for his return to the lineup after a four-game suspension for violating the league’s PED policy to respond to comments that Shannon Sharpe made when he was initially suspended.
Sharpe took issue with Gates’s use of the well-worn excuse that he “never knowingly ingested” banned substances and said that Gates’s suspension “calls into question” all that Gates has accomplished during his NFL career. Gates said this week that Sharpe is trying to tarnish his career because Sharpe is competitive with Gates about who had the better NFL career.
On his Sirius XM NFL Radio show on Friday, Sharpe responded to Gates by saying he “feels bad” for Gates if he thinks that Sharpe cares about Gates breaking his records. He again mocked Gates’s excuse for the violation and said that Gates shouldn’t “blame me for your misdeeds.”
“Antonio Gates, your anger, your frustration is pointed in the wrong direction,” Sharpe said. “When you walk by the mirror, take a peek to your right or your left. That’s the guy you should be upset with, not me. We played the same position. We played it at a very high level. But you tried to take a shortcut somewhere along the way and I never did. And that’s not my fault, that’s yours.”
Whatever your opinion of Sharpe as a player or broadcaser, it’s pretty hard to argue that any tarnish associated with Gates’s suspension is the fault of anyone but Gates. Whether he knowingly took a banned substance or failed to do the necessary legwork to make sure what he was taking was legal, it falls on Gates to do those things and he has to deal with whatever consequences are associated with it.