Arizona Cardinals linebacker Markus Bailey was slapped with a six-game suspension by the NFL Tuesday.
The 27-year-old was handed the ban for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances.
The linebacker will be ineligible to return until Week 18 when the 6-4 Cardinals face the San Francisco 49ers in the final game of the regular season.
Bailey said that he accepts the suspension with ‘sadness and disappointment’ in a statement shared Tuesday evening.
However, he appeared to deny willingly or knowingly using substances banned under the league’s drug policy.
‘Anyone who knows me knows I would never have purposely taken any banned substance and that I’ve always been very intentional about what I put in my body,’ Bailey’s statement read.
Linebacker Markus Bailey was slapped with a six-game suspension by the NFL Tuesday
The Cardinal was handed the ban for violating NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs
Bailey entered the NFL as a seventh-round pick in the 2020 Draft with the Cincinnati Bengals
‘I’ve been tested countless times over the course of my NFL and college career and I’ve always been clean. I am accepting the suspension now so that I can put this behind me and get back in the locker room with my brothers as soon as possible this season. I have always been and will always be a clean athlete.’
Meanwhile, Bailey’s lawyer insisted that they would look into how the player inadvertently digested the substance before branding the NFL ‘unforgivably strict.’
‘The NFL has an unforgiving strict liability policy,’ says Rick Collins, Esq., attorney for the player.
‘Each athlete is responsible for whatever banned substance is detected no matter how it got there. Unlike some other sports, the NFL offers no reduced sanction for food or supplement contamination, which is a common concern.
‘There is no threshold for most banned substances below which results are partially or fully excused in cases of inadvertent ingestion. We are investigating the source of the trace contaminant. Meanwhile, Markus has opted to accept the suspension.’
The Cardinals face a tight race in the NFC West where Arizona is currently narrowly leading, while all three of their divisional rivals – the 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams – sit at 5-5.
Arizona will face the Seahawks twice within the next two weeks before wrapping up their regular season with back-to-back clashes against the Rams and 49ers.
Bailey entered the NFL as a seventh-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft with the Cincinnati Bengals, where he stayed for four years until signing a deal with the Cardinals this past August.
He has played just one game for the Cardinals so far this season, playing 16 snaps on special teams in a 17-15 win over the Los Angeles Chargers on October 21.
