This NFL off-season has been one of the wildest in recent history, from massive blockbuster trades to players retiring and unretiring. But, something has been overlooked. That is the suspension of Calvin Ridley for the 2022-2023 season. When you first hear this, you probably think that Ridley did something like take performance-enhancing drugs or break the law or something. But then it was reported that he was being suspended for gambling on NFL games throughout the season. 

When asked how NFL suspensions could be fixed, senior Matthew Lynch said, ¨It’s a challenging topic to just find an answer for, but the easiest fix will be to consider how bad these infractions genuinely are. Just doing that can help make these suspensions seem even. However, we also must remember that we likely don’t know the whole story in situations like Calvin Ridley’s.¨

This led to many people talking about how the length of these suspensions in the NFL is very unbalanced. For instance, a player who gets suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs or substance abuse is only four games for their first offense and then eight games to an entire season for their second offense. While this suspension length does seem fitting when you compare it to other suspension lengths such as Ridley’s, with other notable ones being Tom Brady being suspended for only four games after it was found that the Patriots were found guilty of deflating footballs during a playoff game, and lastly former Bengals quarterback Cedric Benson was suspended for three games after being charged with assault.

As you may already see, these suspensions seem a little bit off. The main thing causing the discussion is whether something like gambling is worse than someone being charged for assault/ Many people are worried that this could message the younger generations that something like assault isn’t as wrong as gambling. 

It’s unlikely that these suspension problems will be resolved overnight or even within the next year; all we can do is hope they can come to terms with a suspension rule that makes sense. Along with realizing that we may not even know what the full details are regarding what the players are being suspended for.