Suh and Goodell to Discuss Rules in Meeting

If image is everything, then Detroit Lions defensive end Ndamukong Suh realizes he could have a problem.

Suh, who has been drawing attention, along with three fines, for rough hits over the past two seasons, will be meeting with N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday to plead his case that he’s really just playing hard, and not dirty.

“It’s more or less just to get an understanding of how they want to look at my play,” Suh told The Detroit News on Sunday, after the Lions’ 45-10 win over the Broncos in Denver. “It’s just an opportunity to have a great dialogue and see what I can take out of the meeting. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing. If it’s something, then it’s something.”

The meeting will include Suh, Goodell, the league executives Ray Anderson, Carl Johnson, Merton Hanks and the operations consultant Jeff Fisher.

“Commissioner Goodell and his staff have had many meetings with players, both individually and in groups,” the N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello told The Detroit News. “This particular meeting has been in the works for several weeks and grew out of Commissioner Goodell’s respect for Ndamukong Suh and Ndamukong’s desire to gain a deeper understanding of NFL rules and policies.”

Lions Coach Jim Schwartz is also expected to be at the meeting, and he could have some words about NFL.com’s dubbing of Sunday’s Lions-Broncos game as “Good vs. Evil,” the inference being that Tim Tebow and the Broncos are good and Suh and the Lions are evil.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all for anybody associated with the game to bill it that way and it was especially disappointing coming from an arm of the N.F.L.,” Schwartz said. “It wasn’t a rallying cry or anything else but it was disappointing and I don’t think it was appropriate. We are trying to win games. We’re certainly not trying to market ourselves that way.”

Suh also took issue with the good vs. evil story line.

“Evil prevails and hopefully we are going to continue to keep it that way if that’s (how) they want to perceive us,” Suh said to MLive.com. “For me personally, it means nothing to me. I’m going to continue to be me. I know who I am. I’m not an evil person.”

Suh was most recently accused by Atlanta Falcons players of mocking and taunting quarterback Matt Ryan while he was down with a knee injury. Suh was angered by the accusation, denying that he had done anything to Ryan.

“Go back and watch the film and then come to me and point to where I made mistakes,” he said. “Point to where I cut somebody, where I hit somebody late in the back. Let me know. I want to see it.”

But the Lions did not help their increasingly dark reputation against the Broncos. Several Lions mocked Tebow on Sunday for his public professions of faith, first when linebacker Stephen Tulloch kneeled in “prayer” (a take-off from Tebow’s genuflecting pose coined as “Tebowing“), and then Tony Scheffler punctuated his touchdown with a half-kneel nod to Tebow and a mock Mile-High salute.

“It was just something that I thought about throughout the week knowing that I’d be spying him and have a couple blitzes to get after him,” Tulloch to MLive.com. “It’s something I was having fun with. I told one of my friends I was going to do it, so I was able to do it.”

Suh, Goodell to Discuss Rules in Meeting

If image is everything, then Detroit Lions defensive end Ndamukong Suh realizes he could have a problem.

Suh, who has been drawing attention, along with three fines, for rough hits over the past two seasons, will be meeting with N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday to plead his case that he’s really just playing hard, and not dirty.

“It’s more or less just to get an understanding of how they want to look at my play,” Suh told The Detroit News on Sunday, after the Lions’ 45-10 win over the Broncos in Denver. “It’s just an opportunity to have a great dialogue and see what I can take out of the meeting. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing. If it’s something, then it’s something.”

The meeting will include Suh, Goodell, the league executives Ray Anderson, Carl Johnson, Merton Hanks and the operations consultant Jeff Fisher.

“Commissioner Goodell and his staff have had many meetings with players, both individually and in groups,” the N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello told The Detroit News. “This particular meeting has been in the works for several weeks and grew out of Commissioner Goodell’s respect for Ndamukong Suh and Ndamukong’s desire to gain a deeper understanding of NFL rules and policies.”

Lions Coach Jim Schwartz is also expected to be at the meeting, and he could have some words about NFL.com’s dubbing of Sunday’s Lions-Broncos game as “Good vs. Evil,” the inference being that Tim Tebow and the Broncos are good and Suh and the Lions are evil.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all for anybody associated with the game to bill it that way and it was especially disappointing coming from an arm of the N.F.L.,” Schwartz said. “It wasn’t a rallying cry or anything else but it was disappointing and I don’t think it was appropriate. We are trying to win games. We’re certainly not trying to market ourselves that way.”

Suh also took issue with the good vs. evil story line.

“Evil prevails and hopefully we are going to continue to keep it that way if that’s (how) they want to perceive us,” Suh said to MLive.com. “For me personally, it means nothing to me. I’m going to continue to be me. I know who I am. I’m not an evil person.”

Suh was most recently accused by Atlanta Falcons players of mocking and taunting quarterback Matt Ryan while he was down with a knee injury. Suh was angered by the accusation, denying that he had done anything to Ryan.

“Go back and watch the film and then come to me and point to where I made mistakes,” he said. “Point to where I cut somebody, where I hit somebody late in the back. Let me know. I want to see it.”

But the Lions did not help their increasingly dark reputation against the Broncos. Several Lions mocked Tebow on Sunday for his public professions of faith, first when linebacker Stephen Tulloch kneeled in “prayer” (a take-off from Tebow’s genuflecting pose coined as “Tebowing“), and then Tony Scheffler punctuated his touchdown with a half-kneel nod to Tebow and a mock Mile-High salute.

“It was just something that I thought about throughout the week knowing that I’d be spying him and have a couple blitzes to get after him,” Tulloch to MLive.com. “It’s something I was having fun with. I told one of my friends I was going to do it, so I was able to do it.”

By Not Fining Coaches, N.F.L. Leaves Itself Open to Charges of Hypocrisy

It’s hard to argue with this line of reasoning by Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports:

The NFL fined Packers linebacker Clay Matthews $5,000 for wearing yellow cleats with his nasty throwback uniform.

Steelers safety Troy Polamalu got docked twice that amount for borrowing a team doctor’s cell phone on the sidelines – to assure his wife he was OK after suffering an apparent head injury.

And the Jousting Jims, Harbaugh and Schwartz? After a contentious postgame handshake and bumping incident involving the 49ers’ and Lions’ charged-up coaches turned into a full-fledged spectacle at Ford Field two Sundays ago, the NFL took swift and decisive action. Get this: The league reportedly sent out a memo to all 32 teams, reminding everyone to behave at game’s end.

The decision not to fine Harbaugh and Schwartz was so puzzling that Mike Holmgren, the Browns’ president, called the league office,  according to Jason Cole of Yahoo Sports:

“Even if we’re only talking about $5,000 or $10,000, there should have been some fine,” Holmgren said. “That’s not good for our league and if my guy [Pat Shurmur] had done it, I’d say the same thing. You have tough, intense games, but afterward, you conduct yourself a certain way. [Bill] Parcells and I had plenty of tough games, but we always were gentlemen to each other after the game.”

Extra point Does Roger Goodell risk the appearance of two standards of justice in his league, one for coaches and one for players?

Goodell, Union to Meet with Congress on H.G.H. Testing

Representatives of the N.F.L., including Commissioner Roger Goodell, and the players union will meet with members of Congress Friday in Washington to discuss the holdup in implementing a blood testing program for human growth hormone.

In addition to Goodell, the league’s top lawyer, Jeffrey Pash, and Adolpho Birch, who oversees its drug testing program, are expected to attend the meeting. DeMaurice Smith is not expected to attend because, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was told, he is traveling overseas. The union will be represented by, among others, the Ravens’ Dominique Foxworth, who was a key player in the labor negotiations. But according to a person briefed on the committee’s thinking, they are disappointed that Smith is not available. Also expected to attend are members of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

The purpose of the meeting is to allow both sides to explain their positions on testing to Representatives Darrell Issa, a Republican from California and the committee chairman and Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat. And the committee members are likely to ask the union what specific questions they want answered to allow testing to go forward in the coming months, or if there are other issues that would indicate a general reluctance by the union to implement testing.

While the parties agreed to start testing for human growth hormone as part of the collective bargaining agreement completed in August, testing has not begun because the union says it needs more information about the specifics of blood tests used by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Those tests, which are used on Olympics athletes, among others, determine the ratio of human growth hormone in the blood and compare it to the ratio that is naturally occurring. The union spokesman George Atallah said the union’s primary concern was how WADA established the baseline ratio for its tests and whether it was appropriate to use for professional football players.

WADA officials have said the ratio remains the same in nearly every subject it has studied. The union says it wants WADA to turn over the population study that led to the establishment of the threshold ratio; WADA has declined, saying that plenty of information about how the test works is available and that it fears the release of more sensitive information could help athletes figure out how to cheat.

Atallah, though, said he remained confident that there would be HGH testing in the N.F.L. “soonish” and that he could imagine a separate population study on N.F.L. players being conducted. Atallah said the union had not had formal discussions with the league about creating such a population study though.

Congress Pushing N.F.L. Over H.G.H. Testing

With negotiations to begin a program to test N.F.L. players for human growth hormone at a standstill, 14 members of Congress, led by the former N.F.L. quarterback Heath Shuler, sent a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell and the union chief DeMaurice Smith asking for an explanation of their positions on the test and an expected start date for the testing.

The sides have been in a standoff almost since they agreed in the new collective bargaining agreement to begin blood-testing for H.G.H. this season. At the time, the hope was that testing would begin by the season opener, with what both sides said were details of the testing procedure — like how blood would be procured and transported — to be settled.

Soon after the deal was signed in early August, the union began to question the validity of tests endorsed by the World Anti-Doping Agency and used to test minor league baseball players and athletes in Olympic sports. A meeting with WADA officials in Canada, which Goodell attended but Smith did not, did nothing to move the negotiations along.

“We are therefore disappointed that the testing has not yet begun,” said the letter, which was sent by the Professional Sports Caucus. “It is important that fans, and especially your youngest fans, believe that the N.F.L. is doing all that it can to ensure the integrity of the game and the health of the players. Not testing for H.G.H. given the widespread acceptance of the science underlying it sends the wrong message.”

Until H.G.H. testing begins, the N.F.L. has reverted to its old testing program for performance-enhancing drugs. That program does not include an independent third party to decide appeals of drug suspensions, a right the players won in the new labor deal.