With Cowboys linebacker Rolando McClain suspended 10 games to start the season and absent from the team, a new report explains that his problems arise not from marijuana but from a supposed codeine addiction.
Brandon George of the Dallas Morning News reports that McClain’s most recent positive test was for opiates not marijuana metabolites. George also reports that McClain has a codeine addiction, arising from the concoction known as “purple drank” -- a mixture of cough syrup and Sprite.
Technically, the information reported by the Dallas Morning News shouldn’t be publicly known, but the confidentiality provision of the substance-abuse policy routinely is violated, often by the league itself through reports appearing on league-owned media. That’s likely why the Cowboys officially are mum on McClain.
“Even we don’t know all the details,” Cowboys executive V.P. Stephen Jones said Tuesday. “We just don’t know.”
Unofficially, someone knows -- and someone is talking.
The talk includes speculation that McClain may not want to play football any longer. Even if he does, McClain needs to choose football over whatever substances that are causing him to test positive. He consistently hasn’t, which means that his career is far closer to the end than the beginning.