Three more suspensions have been announced today by the NFL, but unlike Wes Welker‘s four-game penalty, these late-minute bans won’t have an adverse effect on any teams around the league, since the players being disciplined are all free agents. According to Howard Balzer of The SportsXchange (via Twitter), quarterback Dominique Davis has received a one-game suspension, linebacker Erin Henderson has been suspended for four games, and running back Andre Brown has been banned for eight games.
Brown, whose penalty is the most severe, signed with the Texans earlier in the offseason, but was let go by the team in mid-August, well before roster cutdowns. Reports at the time suggested that Brown’s performance during training camp was underwhelming and that he was slipping down the depth chart, so it’s not clear if Houston knew a suspension was coming when the team decided to cut him. If the club didn’t learn about the suspension until after the fact, the decision was a fortuitous one.
The NFL suspended Brown back in 2012 for four games for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs, but that penalty was overturned since Brown tested positive for Adderall, a drug for which he had a prescription. As Adam Caplan of ESPN.com notes (via Twitter), the reason for this suspension has yet to be specified, so it’s not clear what rules Brown violated. The ban certainly doesn’t help his chances of finding NFL work this season though.
It’s also not clear why Davis was suspended for a game, though in Henderson’s case, presumably the four-game ban is related to violations of the NFL’s personal conduct policy — the ex-Vikings linebacker was arrested twice in the last year on suspicion of DUI.