With Seahawks starting cornerbacks Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner facing four-game suspensions for allegedly testing positive for Adderall, the suspensions won’t take effect until the appeals have been resolved.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the NFL wants to resolve the appeals quickly.
The league wants to conduct the hearings next week. The players are resisting, not in order to delay the punishment but because the challenge to the suspensions will arise from irregularities in the collection process. In order to properly prepare for the hearings, the players and the NFLPA will need to consult with experts, and possibly retain one or more of them to testify.
So before anyone insists these guys should taking their medicine for taking something other than their medicine, keep in mind that they have rights -- and that these situations often consume several months before they are resolved.
In the case of Sherman and Browner, the source says that both players were subject to random testing on the Monday after a September 2012 game. They recently received notification of the looming suspensions.
Ideally, the entire situation would have remained confidential until the process was exhausted. In many cases, confidentiality is preserved. Here, it obviously wasn’t.