Former Green Bay Packers defensive end [intlink id=”205″ type=”category”]Johnny Jolly[/intlink] was arrested last weekend for codeine possession for the third time and [intlink id=”25″ type=”category”]Aaron Rodgers[/intlink] thinks the NFL is partly to blame.
Jolly was suspended indefinitely by the league in July of 2010 and hasn’t been granted reinstatement despite applying in February.
“It’s just disappointing,” Rodgers told Jason Wilde of ESPN Milwaukee, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. “And I’ll be honest, I think the league deserves some of the blame in this case. When you look at some of the other guys that have been reinstated in the league after jail sentences, and justly, rightly so, Johnny didn’t serve any days in prison, sat out for a year and still couldn’t get his case heard, from what I was told. I just think that that’s wrong. . . . I think the Commissioner’s done a great job of cleaning up some of the stuff in the league. That said, if you take a guy away from his support system . . . I don’t think that’s helping.”
We don’t really know the full story with Jolly. The NFL doesn’t announce specifically why players are suspended and there’s been speculation Jolly violated the substance abuse policy multiple times, which could be why his penalty has been so stiff.
Still, you have to wonder if things would’ve been different for Jolly if was with the team. It seemed pretty easy for a convicted dog killer and a presumed rapist to get reinstated.
But drugs are obviously way worse than those things.