NFL suspends five players for gambling
The NFL on Friday suspended five players for violating the league’s gambling policies, including three suspended for at least the entire 2023 season, in the largest pool of penalties for gambling violations in 60 years.
The announcement comes as the NFL, the nation’s richest and most popular sports league, encourages gambling through its relationships with sports betting companies, while also trying to maintain the public’s confidence that football games are pristine and unaffected by the massive amounts used. on them.
The league did not release details of the bets placed by these players or how the violations came to light, but said the investigation found no evidence that “inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way” .
Following a league investigation, receiver Quintez Cephus and safety CJ Moore of the Detroit Lions and defensive end Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games last season. The players can petition the league for reinstatement after the 2023 season.
Two other Lions players, receivers Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams, were suspended six games each for other gambling violations, including bets from an NFL facility on other sporting events, according to the team.
The sanctions take effect immediately and are no longer subject to appeal, an NFL spokesman said Friday.
Toney’s agent, Andy Simms, declined to comment when reached on Friday. The agency representing Williams said he was penalized for an online wager unrelated to football that would have been allowed if placed outside the team’s facility. “Jameson would never knowingly compromise the integrity of the game he loves,” the agency said.
Agents for the other three players and a representative from the NFL players’ union did not respond to messages asking for comment.
Shortly after the suspensions were announced, the Lions cut Cephus, who spent part of the last two seasons on injured reserve, and Moore, who the team signed in 2019 as an undrafted free agent.
“These players exhibited decision making that is inconsistent with our organizational values and in violation of league rules,” Lions General Manager Brad Holmes said in a statement. The commanders said in a statement that they “support the league’s findings and actions”. Toney remains on the team’s roster.
The sentences handed down Friday follow those of former Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley, who was suspended for a season in 2022, and Arizona Cardinals defenseman Josh Shaw, who was suspended in November 2019 until the end of the 2020 season. Both players were punished for gambling on NFL games.
The recent string of suspensions, the first in decades, comes after the NFL reversed its long-held opposition to sports gambling. In 2017, team owners voted to approve the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, and a major turning point came in 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 law that banned sports betting in nearly every state. Since then, the NFL and other professional American leagues have formed partnerships with major gambling companies and casinos.
The last cluster of NFL gambling penalties on the same scale as those announced Friday came in 1963, when the Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung and the Lions’ defensive lineman Alex Karras — then two of the league’s biggest stars – were suspended for the season for betting on NFL games. Five other players were also fined for betting on the 1962 championship game.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did not comment on the suspensions issued Friday, but when Ridley’s 2022 ban was announced, he said NFL staff gambling on football games justified “the most substantial sanction” because it “violated the integrity of the game” endangered.
Details of the five players’ violations were not made public by the NFL
In Ridley’s case, he used a betting app to place three parlay bets in November 2021 while in Florida and away from his team. Genius Sports, a company hired by the NFL to “provide comprehensive integrity services to monitor bets,” alerted the NFL that a player may have facilitated the bets, prompting a league investigation.
An NFL spokesperson said that each year the league informs staff of policies that prohibit them from placing or facilitating bets on an NFL game, practice or other event, such as the draft. Players may bet on other sports, but they may not gamble in the workplace or while on the job, including traveling to matches or during promotional appearances on behalf of the league.