Panthers’ Frank Alexander suspended one year for substance abuse

After violating the NFL’s drug policy, Carolina Panthers defensive end Frank Alexander has been suspended for one year.

It’s been a day of demotions and suspensions in the NFL.

For repeat offenders, it has not been a good day for some players in the NFL. On Tuesday, the league announced that Carolina Panthers defensive end Frank Alexander would be suspended for a year after violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

For the Panthers, they were already without Alexander for the season, as he tore his Achilles in the preseason and was placed on injured reserve as a result of the injury. However, this extends far past that for the Panthers, as this has entered a territory of Alexander breaking the Panthers’ trust and defying the faith that the team had shown in him.

He was already slated to be suspended for four games at the beginning of the year, which became 10 more after a repeat offense. Now the league has tacked on another year to Alexander, who had promised the Panthers that he would stop smoking marijuana.

Alexander had told the Charlotte Observer before the season, that the only reason he had used marijuana was because it healed him from his injury and that it allowed him to relax.

"“I didn’t do it before I went to work. I didn’t do it at work. It was simply like after I got out of practice, I wanted to kind of relax and chill. It kind of healed my body up,” he says. “It wasn’t like a thing I was doing all the time. I didn’t need it to get up and go.”"

Still, Alexander had promised he would stop, but it appears that is not the case as he has now failed his fourth drug test in the league. Between the recovery time of a torn Achilles, it wasn’t likely that Alexander was going to get much off-season work in next year. Now, it appears he won’t be seeing next year at all, with his suspension running toward almost the end of the 2016 season.

This is yet another example of a player that has been given many chances from an organization, only to not return the favor that they have extended toward him by keeping him on the roster.