If players are given an approved list of supplements, is there something more than a competitive advantage that causes them to deviate from the NFL list?

Therein lies the issue. The "list of approved supplements" is hosted by a third party, Aegis Shield. All they do is verify ingrediant labels do not contain a banned substance. If they don't have it in their database the player can submit a copy of the ingredient list. The problem is that sometimes the products are tainted by unlisted ingredients.

This is from the NFLPA's Drug Policies and Resources page:

"The NFLPA does not approve supplements. The AegisShield app is available to help players check the list of ingredients on supplement labels against the NFL’s list of banned substances. This does not mean that taking a supplement will be safe as far as the NFL is concerned. Supplements can contain substances not listed on the labels, and the NFL holds you responsible for anything in your bodies, even if you take a substance accidentally. The final responsibility rests with you to ensure that you do not take a banned substance."

These players are not taking something they know is banned for any competitive advantage. They would have to load up on something to gain anything material and then they would know there would be no way to avoid getting caught. I've heard that virtually every case deals with unlisted ingredients even on products listed as safe. The only way to be totally assured would be to avoid supplements altogether and that's not going to happen.

So you know Onyemata took something tainted from the third-party approved list?

Get real, JP. Of course not. I'm saying nobody is stupid enough to knowingly take something that they know will cause a positive test. That is beyond ridiculous. That leaves taking something on Aegis Shield's approved list that was tainted or taking something that was not on the list, yet had an ingredient list NOT including a banned substance that was indeed present.

If the Onyemata camp was having all of his supplements tested to identify the culprit it would mean that they know none of the ingredient lists on said supplements included a banned substance.

I will repeat, this is the case in virtually every banned substance violation. Players have been gripping about this for years. I can't remember the player, but it was a few years back that he compared it to Russian Roulette. The companies that make these supplements also produce supplements for the general public that can contain the components banned for NFL players. Cross contamination is always a possibility. But, that is still on the player, fair or not.

Check out this story on banned substance contamination from February of last year.

Illegal Contact: Banned drugs found in athletic performance supplements

Nashville, Tennessee (InvestigateTV) – Taylor Lewan was worried about the impact playing professional football would have on his life after the game. Specifically, he said he was worried about his brain and being able to spend meaningful time with his young daughter as she grows up.

So, he took supplements with the goal of keeping his brain healthy while continuing to play a violent game. Those supplements got him into trouble.

The 6-foot-7, more than 300-pound offensive tackle has given and taken his share of hits in his six seasons with the Tennessee Titans.

He started the 2018 season with a collision during week one that put him in the NFL’s concussion protocol.

Lewan then started the 2019 season missing four games after the NFL suspended him. The league hit him with the penalty after he tested positive for banned substances during a May drug screening.

He tested positive for Ostarine, which is a drug that has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for more than a decade. The drug is sometimes illegally marketed and sold as a supplement for body-building.

But Lewan said during a team-hosted news conference that he didn’t intentionally take Ostarine. He blamed contamination. He said the supplements he took with advice from a nutritionist and his doctors were tainted.

“I just wanted to make it clear to [fans] that I didn’t take anything knowingly,” Lewan said. “I’ve never done anything knowingly that would cheat the game.”

Lewan is far from the only high-caliber athlete who has tested positive for banned substances and claimed they had no intention of doping. Notably, Clemson went into the 2019 national championship football game missing three players – all found with Ostarine in their systems.

“I love this team and my family too much to even think about putting a substance like that in my body,” said Dexter Lawrence, who played for Clemson at the time and now plays for the New York Giants. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know how it got there.”

And, it’s a plausible scenario, according to scientists who study supplements. There is repeated evidence that unintentional contamination happens, particularly because of haphazard manufacturing processes.

Some athletes have proven their contamination cases in court or to their sports organizations. Scientists unaffiliated with teams or specific sports have found supplements laced with heavy metals, mold – and steroids and steroid-similar compounds.

Those contaminated supplements, according to athletes, sports attorneys and scientists are easily found online. But they are also found in grocery stores, sports nutrition stores, and gyms.

“The dietary supplement industry has some of the finest manufacturing facilities and brands in the world, but it also has a low threshold for entry and has some pretty scary things out there,” said David Trosin, who manages the dietary supplement certification program for NSF International, the laboratory that helped develop the national standards for the industry.

When Trosin began working for NSF about 12 years ago, WADA had banned 108 substances. There are now 272 banned, with WADA continuously researching and adding more.

Some of those drugs, such as Ostarine, are not only banned in professional, collegiate and Olympic sports – because they are not FDA-approved, they are also illegal to sell for human consumption.

But InvestigateTV has found them to be readily available to purchase, which experts said is why the substances are popping up in other supplements. A manufacturer making a banned substance may taint a batch of another supplement because of poor quality control.

For most people, a professional athletic career is not at stake. But NSF said anyone buying supplements should be concerned about contamination.

For nearly a decade, Deuce McAllister suited up for the New Orleans Saints, the team he’d grown up watching as a kid growing up in Mississippi. He was a first-round draft pick in 2001 and a powerhouse running back in the NFL, frequently leading his division in yards.

But toward the end of his career, he made headlines with two fellow Saints players for something else: Violating the league’s drug policy.

It all happened, he said, because he was trying to drop weight.

“We were in the weight room, as far as lifting. You would go in the sauna, the steam room, and try to sweat the weight out, sweat away the extra pounds,” McAllister said.

For McAllister, that meant staying at 218 pounds when he began his career and 237 by the time he retired. The penalty if he didn’t hit weight: He owed the team money.

“You had to weigh in. And if you were over weight, your prescribed weight by the coach as well as the strength and conditioning coach, you got fined for it,” McAllister said.

In trying to keep his weight down, McAllister turned to using diuretics. He said for four years he’d used the same product, as had many other athletes he knew. But in 2008, he said that same diuretic tripped his drug test.

He tested positive for a specific diuretic that is banned because it can be used to mask steroid use. McAllister said his usual diuretic was contaminated, and he was devastated because he said he played clean.

“I never wanted to cheat the game,” he said. “If I knew that it was something that was going to put a negative stain on my name and what I had worked for, I’d never have [taken the diuretic].”

McAllister said he even had the product checked by trainers.

“They sent it over, the product was tested, and … not that particular batch was tainted, but another batch was tainted,” he said.

He also said the particular product was easily accessible for all consumers like many products marketed as supplements.


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There's much more in the article documenting cases of tainted supplements and such.

The Saints loved DT Da’shawn Hand in the 2018 draft. He’s become a bit of a forgotten man in Detroit with the drafting of Levi Onwuzurike and Alim McNeill to go with Michael Brockers. Might be an option to trade a late round pick for Hand.