Panthers owner David Tepper gave Eric Reid a job when no other team was willing to.
And with the Panthers safety accusing the league (and by extension, the NFLPA) for singling him out for excessive random drug tests, his boss tried to navigate carefully around questions about his situation.
Asked if he shared Reid’s view that he was being unfairly targeted, Tepper spent a moment as a member of the small club of owners, before letting his guard down a bit.
“I looked at the NFLPA was involved. I think the players union is the right place for him to go for a grievance, for somebody who is in a union,” Tepper said Tuesday.
Then after a pause, he smiled and added: “Listen, if you want to talk off the record with math, I’m very good at math. And I can tell you the math of situations. But I’d rather not comment on that right now one way or another.”
Reid has claimed he was tested seven times, after signing with the Panthers in late September. Sources have suggested he’s overstating the number. Either way, the math Tepper is good at suggests Reid is an extremely unlucky person to get chosen that often. Panthers coach Ron Rivera expressed some polite skepticism of his own, when he said Reid should buy lottery tickets.
But Reid’s lawyers are moving in the direction of preparing legal action, after rejecting the findings of the league and the players association’s joint statement on the matter.
If it reaches a court action, we may see numbers that either exonerate the league and the union and their jointly administered program, or we may find evidence of one of the biggest scandals the league has ever been involved with. One way or the other.