Lane Johnson Not Confident B Sample Is Negative
Lane Johnson. (Jeff Fusco)
UPDATE NO. 2: Ken Sarnoff, Johnson’s agent released a statement after the NFLPA’s.
Lane Johnson's agent, Ken Sarnoff issued a statement pic.twitter.com/NtgfYwjmYV
— Liz Mullen (@liz_mu11en) August 13, 2016
UPDATE: The NFLPA responded to Johnson’s comments about the players union not standing up for its members.
Full NFLPA statement below on Lane Johnson, supplements:
"We always stand up for the rights of our players." pic.twitter.com/xLf32EFE8H
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) August 13, 2016
Original Story
Lane Johnson is “not very confident” his B sample will be negative and clear him of any wrongdoing, he said Saturday after practice. He addressed the media for the first time after reports surfaced of him facing a 10-game suspension for failing a drug test a second time.
Johnson said everything he has taken was approved beforehand through the Aegis Shield app, which the NFL Players Association provides to players. He bought the amino acid supplement online, like the rest of the supplements he purchases, and checked to see if it was approved through the app, which the USADA and NHL also use.
He noted that in addition to the NFLPA, the team does not test the product due to how much it could cost, which he added could be thousands of dollars for one supplement.
“If you send it in to the trainer of your team, all they do is read the labels,” Johnson said. “And they don’t test the products because it costs a lot of money to test each individual product.”
Johnson was suspended in 2014 for four games, which was reportedly due to adderall. He was also clearly upset with the players union.
“There’s no worse feeling to have to go through this again,” Johnson said. “This is something that I desperately wanted to avoid. That’s nothing I ever want to be part of again. I’ve learned my lesson and I feel like the players have no rights. I feel the supplement industry is not regulated, so you do not know what’s in it. It’s hard to believe, coming from a second-time offender.
“But I want that to be clear that the NFLPA does not stand up for players. They don’t check the supplements they give us in the app. And then when you call them and ask them if you test positive for something they approve, it doesn’t matter.”
Johnson and his lawyer have sent the supplement to an independent laboratory and expect to hear back from the lab in a few days. However, he won’t hear back from the league regarding his B sample for a few weeks.
Allen Barbre, who was suspended for four games in 2012 for violating the league’s policy on performance enhancing substances, also weighed in on Johnson’s situation after practice.
“Anything that’s NFS certified is the safest thing you can take. Those are the only ones that they guarantee nothing to be in them,” Barbre said. “They have an app for us that you can scan a product and it’s supposed to say okay, [which] means it’s okay. But the issue is the fact that a company that says what’s on the label is not maybe what’s in there. Because maybe a product they mixed before, there might be leftovers in the bin or something. That’s the issue.”