DISPLAY: Commander’s quarterback has been suspended as a result of the NFL suspending five players for breaking the gambling code.
The National Football League today announced that five players have been punished for breaking the gambling rules of the league.
Any kind of gambling is prohibited in league facilities and events, including practice facilities, for any member of the NFL. The league said that there was no proof of the use of insider knowledge throughout its investigation.
The NFL further said that no games were harmed as a consequence of the gambling.
Three players who wagered on NFL games during the previous season—Quintez Cephus, C.J. Moore, and Shaka Toney of the Detroit Lions—will be suspended permanently, or at least until the completion of the 2023 campaign.
At the conclusion of the season, those players will have the opportunity to request reinstatement.
Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams, two more Lions athletes, have been suspended from the first six games of the regular season. They’ll be allowed to take part in preseason and offseason events.
The NFL’s crackdown coincides with the opening of 33 states’ legal betting markets, including Michigan and Washington, D.C., following a historic 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the door for states to allow legal sports betting.
The NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, WNBA, NASCAR, and MLS are among the major professional organizations that announced earlier this week that they are joining forces with media corporations NBCUniversal and Fox to establish a coalition aimed at regulating the proliferation of sports-betting advertisements on television, the internet, and print media.
The Detroit Lions announced the release of Moore and Cephus shortly after the bans were made public. The NFL’s inquiry was disclosed to the Lions “about a month ago,” according ESPN.
The Detroit Lions executive vice president and general manager Brad Holmes released a statement saying, “We are disappointed by the decision making demonstrated by Stanley and Jameson and will work with both players to ensure they understand the severity of these violations and have clarity on the league rules moving forward.”
The Commanders stated that Toney’s suspension is known to the squad. The franchise released a statement saying, “Since receiving notice, we have fully cooperated with the NFL’s investigation and support the league’s findings and actions.”
The most recent setback for the Commanders is Toney’s suspension. The district attorney general said last week that the Commanders will pay $625,000 to resolve claims that the group had not returned ticket deposits to patrons.
The football club has allegedly promised to reimburse supporters’ security deposits for premium seats since 1996, but instead has allegedly pocketed and squandered the money, according to a lawsuit filed against the Commanders by former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine last year.
A spokesman for Commanders claimed in a statement that the team has been “actively working to return any remaining deposits since 2014” and that they haven’t collected security deposits in over ten years.
