George Atallah Comments on NFL's Investigation into Al Jazeera PED Report

NFL Players Association assistant executive director of external affairs George Atallah said Tuesday that the association does not believe the NFL has enough grounds to investigate a dubious Al Jazeera America report that accused multiple players of using performance-enhancing drugs.     

"We believe if there was something concrete, they would have shown us [already]," Atallah said on Pro Football Talk Live (via Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com).

Last December, Al Jazeera aired an investigative piece titled The Dark Side, which named Peyton Manning, James Harrison, Clay Matthews and Mike Neal among other athletes who allegedly received banned substances. Charles Sly, the pharmacist who served as the main source of Al Jazeera's report, has since recanted his story on multiple occasions.

The NFL launched a review of the situation in January, but the investigation's status was unclear until an Instagram post by Harrison brought the case back to the forefront.

Harrison posted a letter from Adolpho A. Birch III, the NFL's senior vice president of labor policy and government affairs, saying he would be interviewed July 28 at training camp after not returning correspondence this offseason. His string of posts continued with a reply from the NFLPA, asking the NFL about its evidence beyond the debunked report, before posting a list of demands if he were to meet with the league office:

Atallah said the NFL and the NFLPA disagree on whether Sly's original words alone merit an investigation.

"We happen to be right; they happen to be wrong," he said.

The public spat speaks to a growing sense of distrust between the NFL and its players, which has become one of the prevailing stories of Roger Goodell's commissionership. Atallah specifically pointed to the league's handling of the Deflategate scandal—a case that's still not over a year-and-a-half later—as a reason the NFLPA isn't budging in this case.

"They have proved to have a terrible track record when it comes to investigations," Atallah said.

As Fowler noted, Goodell may choose to suspend the players if they refuse to cooperate. Such a suspension would border on unprecedented, though Brady's failure to fully cooperate in the Deflategate investigation shaped the severity of his punishment.

At the least, this is merely the latest struggle for power in the United States' most popular sport. 

 

Follow Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) on Twitter.