Erin Henderson Suspended for Four Games

…unless his intent was to give the NFL drug-testing people a Christmas gift and raise in their holiday spirits with a law and order west of the St. Croix public service announcement.

This golden oldie goes out to #50: “I always feel like somebody’s watching me.”

Yes, dude, what part of those newpaper stories did you not understand?

you can’t really form an educated opinion about his suspension.

For all we know, he might have just missed a test.

Either way though, this sucks. I’m sure the Viking haters out there will gobble this up and it will re-ignite all the anti-Viking rhetoric we heard when the Williams case was in the news every day.

http://www.thefootballexpert.com/JLemanfranchiseplayer070001.html

I thought he was really good coming out of Illinois. This is his chance to shine.

Go get ’em Jay…I mean, uh, J.

All he did in college was produce on the field (and off the field as well, where he was an Academic All-American). His 40 time and Rose Bowl injury (perhaps unfairly) killed his draft stock.

The Vikings are usually spectacular at finding & singing gems from the undrafted free agent pool — I thought they did well with Leman & Radovich back in ’08 and I was pleasantly surprised to see them back on the practice squad last week.

Leman is apparently one of those “high motor”, good-leadership players, which is a polite way of saying he lacks superlative natural athletic ability. At the very least, he could be a special teams ace in the mold of Heath Farwell or Kenny Onatolu (I’d prefer to see him taking Erin H.‘s role on special teams over Greenway, only because I remember that’s where Greenway got hurt his rookie year).

I don’t expect to see him in any defensive packages, barring a total breakdown. Farwell was worked in early in the season and Onatolu more lately, but because the Vikings just never have more than 3 LBs on the field, and often enough only have 2, Leman’s shot at any defensive stats will be limited unless he really impresses the coaches during practice — or that aforementioned meltdown occurs.

But yes, nice add, particularly for a team concerned about long-term depth at ILB. But that’s what he’ll be, for now – depth.

In defense of his good name, Erin Henderson says he did nothing wrong. He suspects that either the test was wrong or something inadvertantly got into some medication he took during training camp.

http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_14014034?source=rss

I support Erin Henderson, especially after reading this story. That said, everything just needs to focus on beating the Panthers right now.