The NFL’s reputation for drug testing players after dazzling individual performances resulted in a hilarious moment in the Philadelphia Eagles locker room.
Following running back Saquon Barkley’s career-high 255-yard effort in a win over the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, the MVP candidate found a drug-testing notice at his stall in the visitor’s locker room.
Only this wasn’t the NFL calling for Barkley to be tested. It was a prank orchestrated by tight end Dallas Goedert.
‘That’s not me,’ Barkley laughed to reporters. ‘I’ve been drug tested enough.’
He’s not joking.
Running back Saquon Barkley of the Philadelphia Eagles stands on the field at SoFi Stadium
During a recent performance against his former team, the New York Giants, Barkley managed to hurdle a defender backwards en route to a 176-yard day.
The league responded by drug testing him immediately after the win.
‘I got drug tested right after the game,’ Barkley said on ‘Air It Out’ in the days that followed.
Other NFL players have accused the league of carefully timing the supposedly random drug tests.
Barkley’s Eagles teammate AJ Brown said he was tested after a three-touchdown performance in 2022.
‘Rogerrrrr this is not random,’ Brown wrote on X, referencing commissioner Roger Goodell.
An NFL spokesman did not respond directly to Brown’s claim at the time, but did share the league policy, which was collectively bargained with the players’ union.
‘Neither the union or the NFL is involved in the random selection process as it is run by an Independent Administrator who uses a computer program,’ NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told DailyMail.com.
The NFL drug-testing policy requires that 10 players from each team, chosen at random by a computer, will be screened for performance-enhancing drugs each week.
Barkley’s Eagles teammate AJ Brown said he was tested after a three-TD performance in 2022
Browns defensive end Myles Garrett accused the league of testing him after showing off his muscular arms in a pair of 2021 games
The league conducts roughly 18,000 PED tests during each preseason and season, most of which are random. Roughly 8,000 or so PED tests are given to players who are placed in the ‘Reasonable Cause’ testing program, McCarthy told Cleveland.com in 2019.
Players in the ‘Reasonable Cause’ testing program either tested positive previously or there was ‘sufficient credible evidence of steroid involvement up to two football seasons prior to his applicable college draft or at a scouting combine.’
Naturally, players have their suspicions over just how random the testing is. Several have accused the league of testing players who are coming off strong performances.
In 2019, then-Cleveland Browns receiver Odell Beckham Jr. told Cleveland.com that he was being targeted by the league.
‘[The NFL] made me come in Monday when we had an off day,’ he said. ‘Had a drug test. Made me come in Thursday after the game. Had another drug test.
‘Nobody is getting tested like me,’ Beckham continued. ‘I know people who didn’t get tested for five months in the offseason and I’m getting tested every time.’
Browns defensive end Myles Garrett accused the league of testing him after showing off his muscular arms in a pair of 2021 games.
‘I go sleeveless TWO TIMES and get ‘randomly’ drug tested BOTH times,’ Garrett tweeted last October. ‘I’d try 3 for 3 but they can miss me with the blood draw not the vibe. #SleevelessMyles is retired.’
Former San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid accused the league of testing him more after he protested alongside Colin Kaepernick for much of the 2016 NFL season. When Reid resurfaced with the Carolina Panthers in 2018, after filing grievance against the league accusing owners of blackballing him over the protests, the Pro Bowler claimed he was tested seven times in 11 weeks.
According to Yahoo Sports’ math, Reid had just a 1-in-588 chance, or 0.17 percent probability, of being selected that often over that time amount of time, given the NFL’s testing guidelines.
‘I’ve been here 11 weeks, I’ve been drug-tested seven times,’ Reid told reporters. ‘That has to be statistically impossible. I’m not a mathematician, but there’s no way that’s random.’
Through a joint investigation, the NFL and the NFL Players Association ultimately concluded Reid was not unfairly targeted by the league’s performance-enhancing drug testing program.
Reid was one of the first NFL players to join then-San Francisco 49ers teammate Colin Kaepernick in kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
