Ron Rivera Responds to Claims Eric Reid Being Targeted by Drug Testing

On Wednesday, Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera responded to safety Eric Reid's allegation that Monday marked the seventh time he's been drug tested since signing with the team in September.

"I guess there was something about some mathematician saying it's highly improbable, but definitely possible," Rivera told reporters, per David Newton of ESPN.com. "But I'll say this, if my name came up that many times I'd buy a lottery ticket."

On Monday evening, Reid posted the following on Twitter, implying he'd been drug tested for a seventh time:

"That has to be statistically impossible," Reid also said this week, per Ann Killion of the San Francisco Chronicle. "I'm not a mathematician, but there's no way that's random."

That odds of being tested seven total times, and randomly in six of the past 11 weeks, are incredibly miniscule.

"There's a 0.195 percent chance of flipping heads nine times in a row," Nick Kapoor, an adjunct professor of mathematics at Fairfield University, told Jonathan Jones of SI.com. "You have [about] the same probability of flipping a heads nine times in a row as he is being tested six times in 11 weeks."

Reid famously joined Colin Kaepernick by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality in the 2016 preseason, and while Kaepernick remains unsigned, Reid was brought aboard by the Panthers in late September after he didn't latch on with a team as a free agent throughout the offseason, training camps and preseason.

As Jones wrote:

"By noting the alleged frequency of the tests, Reid is clearly calling into question the 'randomness' of the league's drug-testing system, at least as it relates to him. He and many NFL observers are dubious, and some believe more nefarious factors are afoot as they relate to the league and one of its most outspoken players—one who happens to be suing the league."

Reid, like Kaepernick, is suing the league for collusion. The context surrounding Reid makes the frequency of testing feel suspicious, though randomized drug testing was collectively bargained by the NFLPA with the NFL and its owners.

As Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports noted, a number of NFL players in the past "have been rightfully suspicious of how the collectively bargained testing system works. But none of them could ever prove the system is rigged without actually taking a leap into litigation. That's why this method of testing, weaponized or not, isn't going anywhere."