Steelers WR Martavis Bryant accepts one-year minimum suspension
Bryant will be eligible to apply for reinstatement 60 days before the one-year anniversary of his suspension.
By
Jared Dubin
•
1 min read
Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant has been suspended for a minimum of one year for violating the league's substance abuse policy, the NFL has announced.
"Martavis Bryant of the Pittsburgh Steelers has been suspended without pay for a minimum of one year for violating the NFL Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse. Bryant’s suspension begins immediately," reads the NFL's statement on Bryant.
Bryant will be eligible to apply for reinstatement 60 days before the one-year anniversary of his suspension, on Jan. 13, 2017.
Bryant was suspended for the first four games of the 2015 season after a (reported) positive marijuana test. He sat out Week 5 as well, returning for Pittsburgh's sixth game. He caught 50 passes for 765 yards and six touchdowns during the Steelers' final 11 contests. He caught 14 more passes for 183 yards and a score in two playoff games.
Along with Antonio Brown and Markus Wheaton, he formed one of the most explosive trios of wide receivers in the NFL. After adding former Chargers tight end Ladarius Green (replacing the retired Heath Miller), the Steelers should again have been one of the best passing offenses in football. Without Bryant on the field, Pittsburgh will likely have to move the recently re-signed Darius Heyward-Bey and second-year wideout Sammie Coates into larger-than-expected roles.
The Steelers specifically prepared for this possibility, with head coach Mike Tomlin citing the drafting of Coates as a mitigation technique.
"We are not surprised by it," Tomlin said in September, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "We have known about the possibility of it for some time and in a lot of ways it directed our course of action throughout the offseason, specifically the drafting of Sammie Coates, because of the potential of this event."
