[Bathroom Reading] 49ers' Boat Rocked; NFC West Dynamic Uprooted

Not too many weeks ago the league and fans across the world were left speechless with the jaw dropping suspension of Arian Foster and the coordinated detailing of the performance enhancing drug and substance abuse problem the league had faced. Arian Foster’s suspension has shortly subsided and the league returned to a sense of normalcy. It was heavily inferred suspensions were coming, but given the length of time that had since passed it seemed as though the league had stretched out the long arm of the law as much as they wished and wanted to turn the chapter.

That dynamic has now sharply changed with the league releasing a statement announcing suspensions upending another team’s season - The San Francisco 49ers’. The San Francisco 49ers are owners of the best record (10-3) in the NFC West and the NFC as a whole. They’re coming off a definitive 79-24 win over the division rival Seattle Seahawks giving them the edge in the division series and putting them on the fast track to a First Round Bye and a Super Bowl.

The tires on their bandwagon are now bald after the brakes were applied and the car flung immediately into reverse as the league handed down three game suspensions on three key players:

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick

Running Back Frank Gore

Middle Linebacker Patrick Willis

Heartwrenchingly for 49ers fans, these suspensions will last through a key matchup with the Seahawks in only two weeks, a game that could well spell the end of their 49ers hope of a division crown and first round bye come season end. To ease the pain of these losses ever so slightly, the Seahawks game is bracketed by two games against hapless opponents doing their best for a #1 pick at this point in the season. All is not yet lost, but no one is feeling as confident as they were just hours ago about their future.

Several documents have shown up, leaked from the league office, shedding light on the specific reasoning for each of these player’s suspensions.

While in retrospect it makes obvious sense given the circumstances, it previously didn’t seem like it could possibly be and indeed never entered into the minds of players across the league or even most sportswriters. As of a few years ago Frank Gore at the age of 28 had been a workhorse at the running back position for quite some time, tallying 4 1,000 rushing yard seasons and over 200 receptions during those four seasons. At this age it would be expected his body would start to succumb to father time and his workload would decrease, giving way like so many other great running backs had their careers come to an end. Gore defied all logic putting in a career best effort at 31 years of age and rumbling for 1,200 yards in the last three seasons. Grit and talent weren’t the only things getting him to where he was as a report from task force’s investigation details several visits to known Performance Enhancing Drug clinics internationally where rules are less stringent on receiving these treatments than the United States. The report shows an interesting citation that notes this was not the extent of his efforts, having received visits from various medical professionals dabbling in the PED business, presumably during the regular season. The connecting document has not been made available.

Saving ever so little of their team’s and the league’s integrity is that two faces of the NFL on offense and defense,, Kaepernick and Willis respectively, have not been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs like their teammate, instead they’ve merely been caught up doing drugs themselves and distributing them to various players around the league.

Players around the league, should they have done wrong by the league, are most certainly sitting around somewhere wondering when the hammer will come down on them. It seems improbable that everyone connected would be suspended incrementally, much less on a large scale, but this is an uncharted territory the likes of which hasn’t been seen in any league or perhaps even since Stalin reigned in Russia so we simply cannot say with any reasonable certainty what will be happening. If a guess were to be hazarded, it would be suspected that this slow, deliberate, and rather brutal clobbering of teams and players is to effectively send the clear message: Stop!

It's ok, I understand...so I have to remove them of my roster for 3 weeks if I well undertood ??

Just drop them to the bottom of your depth chart.

ok, thank you, that,s what i did