First it was Golden Tate. Then came Nevin Lawson. Now Brandon Copeland has joined his former Lions teammates as players suspended for the first four games of the 2019 NFL season for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs.
Insert your favorite cliched joke about the Lions obviously not using performance-enhancing substances here…
Copeland, who was with the Lions from 2015-2017, is now playing linebacker for the New York Jets. He started 10 games and recorded 5.5 sacks in New York last year. He was a role player for the Lions in 2015-2016 and spent the 2017 campaign on the team’s injured reserve after tearing a pectoral muscle in a 2017 preseason game.
Tate is now with the New York Giants, while Lawson is with the Oakland Raiders. Both players left Detroit in the last year.
Perhaps the Lions have figured out a way to hide PEDs better than any other professional sports team. What’s more likely is a freakish coincidence and a series of players who are trying to extend fledgling careers and overcome injuries (in Lawson and Copeland’s cases) or a regrettable supplement error (Tate’s fertility drug).
The only Lions player suspended for PEDs in the post-Millen era is Armonty Bryant, and the team cut the defensive end in 2017 once his NFL suspension ended.
