James Harrison is a free man and DeAngelo Williams couldn’t be more thrilled.
Harrison was cleared Wednesday in the NFL’s investigation into whether the Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, among others, took or obtained performance-enhancing drugs as had been alleged in a recent Al-Jazeera report.
Williams was ecstatic about his teammate being exonerated, and the Steelers running back expressed his excitement Thursday via Twitter with a video in which he discusses something called the “Tom Brady Rule.”
“When the NFL investigator drop a case on you, man, they try to Tom Brady you,” Williams said. “That’s what we call it now when they try to double-back, the double jeopardy. Ain’t no such thing as double jeopardy. They call that Tom Brady now. It’s the Tom Brady Rule.”
Celebrating @jharrison9292's exoneration! pic.twitter.com/F6VV9Ba9mG
— DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) September 1, 2016
Williams has been critical of Brady and the Patriots in the past, even saying in July that, as an opponent, he’s glad Deflategate is hurting New England. But the 33-year-old also has been around the league long enough to know some things done on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s watch are difficult to explain.
For example, suspending a quarterback four games for maybe knowing that a couple of ball boys took air out of some footballs seems crazy to most. As does threatening to suspend players — Harrison, Green Bay Packers linebackers Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers, and free-agent linebacker Mike Neal — for “conduct detrimental” if they failed to comply with the NFL’s interview requests, even if it ultimately couldn’t be proven that any of the players actually used PEDs.
The “Tom Brady Rule” might not be a real thing, it’s more probable than not that NFL players are aware of what that lingo means.
Thumbnail photo via Aaron Doster/USA TODAY Sports Images
