For the second time in three months, Packers defensive lineman Mike Pennel has been suspended for violating the NFL’s Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse, and his regular season is now over.
Pennel’s suspension begins immediately. He will be eligible to return to Green Bay’s active roster on Jan. 2, one day after the team’s Week 17 finale against the division-leading Detroit Lions.
The team’s PR department released the league’s statement but said, "Because of the confidentiality of the process, the Packers will not have any comment on this matter."
Bookended by four-game bans to begin and now end the season, it’s been a 2016 to forget for Pennel – and also a forgettable one, given his almost total lack of production in between. Hit with his first suspension in September for a substance-abuse violation, the third-year lineman has seven tackles in the eight games he played this year. After a three-tackle performance in Week 6, Pennel has done almost nothing, recording four tackles in the other seven contests, not even getting in against the Colts and losing snaps to rookies Kenny Clark and Dean Lowry.
According to an NFL Network report, Pennel was facing a 10-game suspension for violating the league’s drug policy again. Rather than proceeding with a lawsuit against the NFL over his violation – and risk being banned for a year if he lost it – Pennel accepted the four-game suspension.
Originally signed by Green Bay as an undrafted free agent in 2014, Pennel will be eligible to return for the playoffs, should the Packers make it.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
