Marijuana ‘epidemic’ in upcoming draft class raises concern among NFL personnel

In a year where the draft class is considered one of the best and deepest in recent memory, more and more players are acknowledging a history with marijuana and it is raising concern among NFL personnel. Players have often revealed the news of a failed drug test in college when speaking with team executives.

SI.com spoke with four NFL head coaches, four general managers and two other high-level personnel executives. According to their report, one coach says that at least 10 or 11 of players with first-round grades on their board have had a history with marijuana. Another coach had a similar response saying “one-third” of players on his board have a history with the drug and would require extra evaluation leading up to the draft.

Here are some quotes from the SI report:

"“Marijuana use is almost epidemic, with more guys having tested positive for marijuana at some point in their college background than I can ever remember,” said a longtime team personnel man. “It’s almost as if we are having to figure out a new way to evaluate it as part of the character and background report, because it’s so prevalent. There’re enough instances of it that it’s hard to know how to set your board. You can’t throw out that many guys. You have to go case-by-case and do your homework on them.“It’s something that’s concerning to all coaches and general managers in this league,” one veteran NFL head coach said at the league’s annual meeting in Orlando. “It has been trending the wrong way in recent years. But it’s something that has to be dealt with from on high, at the league level, and not just dealt with on a club by club basis. It’s partly a societal issue, but it’s something we’re having to deal with more and more.“The kids are admitting it much more now, and part of that is what they’ve been coached to do [by their agents or handlers],” one club general manager said. “They want to get the truth out and give you an explanation for their use. That’s seen as better than letting someone else put it out there for you and making you look like you were being evasive.“But we’ve had that same conversation internally on our club: ‘Wow, there’s a lot of kids this year.’ It seems much more common now, across the draft.”“It’s pretty significant as a trend,” the head coach said. “But if you knocked everyone off your board who has experimented with weed, you’d lose about 20 percent of your board, not to mention disqualify a few recent presidents. A third sounds a little high to me, but it’s not a rare occurrence to have a player with some pot use in his background. You have to make a judgment on each individual guy.”"

I would imagine that a much larger percentage of NFL and college players smoke marijuana than this report would indicate. The reason more teams are becoming aware that the players are using marijuana in college is because the players have been educated more on the pre-draft process and understand that it is best to come clean with the knowledge, instead of holding it back and letting the teams find out on their own.