James Harrison turned 39 last month, but he still managed to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers in sacks during the 2016 season with five.
That kind of longevity is especially rare on the defensive side of the ball — only Tom Brady and a few specialists are older active players — so the NFL is making sure that it’s Harrison’s intense workout routines, and nothing unnatural, that have kept the Steelers pass rusher going.
In a post on Instagram, Harrison said he was drug tested by the league Tuesday, marking his third test since the end of March:
This isn’t a new pursuit for the NFL either. Harrison posted in December that he was tested six or seven times in 2016. The league claims to randomly select players to be tested, but Harrison said other players weren’t tested once in 2016.
The linebacker doesn’t sound too happy about the amount of tests either — or at least the claims that they’re random — posting a second photo on Instagram with the hashtag “#insultingmyintelligence.”
Harrison has been suspended once in his NFL career — a one-game ban for a helmet-to-helmet hit on Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy in 2011. He has never tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, and while he was implicated in an Al Jazeera report on PEDs, along with Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers, the NFL cleared all players after an investigation.
Apparently that won’t stop the NFL from looking during Harrison’s final years in the league.