Holton Hill suspended four additional games

Earlier this offseason, the National Football League handed Minnesota Vikings’ cornerback Holton Hill a four-game suspension for a violation of the league’s policy against performance enhancing drugs. Give his well-documented issues with substances at the University of Texas, people were generally surprised that his suspension didn’t stem from something like that.

Well, guess what?

On Tuesday, the league suspended Hill for four additional games because of a violation of the league’s substance abuse policy. This suspension, coupled with his original suspension, means that he will now miss the first half of the 2019 NFL season.

Given the question marks surrounding Mike Hughes’ recovery from his ACL tear, the Vikings were already going to be thin at the corner spot for the first four weeks of the season. Now, there’s the chance that they’ll be thin there for the first eight weeks instead.

Hill will still count as part of the team’s 90-man roster for now, but when the season starts. . .provided the Vikings don’t jettison him they way they did with running back Roc Thomas on Monday. . .he would not count against the team’s 53-man roster, as he would be moved to the suspended list before the start of the regular season. Ironically, there were reports circulating that Hill was at Thomas’ apartment when he was arrested ba

This is a pretty disappointing development, honestly. Hill stepped in when called upon and played pretty well for an undrafted free agent, and you’d have to think he had a place in the team’s long-term plans. At this point, though, he’s now one slip-up away from a 10-game suspension, and another slip up beyond that from worse. Can they trust Hill at this point? I suppose we’ll find out by how they handle this suspension, but I can’t imagine that this is the sort of thing that Mike Zimmer is going to want to deal with.