Gates (and Chargers) will pay, move on

Yes, Antonio Gates’ story has holes.

Showing himself to be a class act for 12 years, though, gets a man the benefit of the doubt.

He hurt himself and his team. He (and the team) will suffer for it. We'll all move on.

In his first public comments since his four-game suspension for a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs was announced, Gates on Thursday spoke of his initial shock and his ultimate acceptance.

“A four-game suspension was never in my mind,” he said. “I thought it was an issue, and I was going to address it. I was going to show them, ‘Look, this is what I’ve been taking, this is all the medicine, the natural way I’ve been doing it. Maybe it was a chemical imbalance that showed up in my system.’ That never happened. I look up, and I was surprised.”

Gates tested positive in April. All positive tests are automatically appealed. The threshold for having a PED suspension overturned, essentially, is showing the league something it has never seen before. In other words, appeals are almost never successful.

“I wasn’t happy with it,” Gates said. “But it’s the way it is. It’s the rules. I’ve got to deal with it ... Knowingly or not knowingly, you just can’t do it. You can’t have it in your system.”

In the vaguest possible terms, Gates said he ingested nothing different this offseason than previous offseasons. When asked what he tested positive for, he indicated he had an elevated testosterone level.

“I’m not really sure how it got into my system,” he said. “I’ve been doing the same things over and over after the season taking care of my body … It’s something where it showed up in a test. I’ve taken multiple tests since then and it didn’t show up; I took multiple tests before then and it didn’t show up. Out of the (many) tests I took in the NFL, one is positive. Who’s to say how it got in my system?”

When a player proclaims innocence by claiming ignorance, it’s correct to point out that such accidents are easily avoidable. Players are cautioned to not take any supplement without checking with the league and have a hotline they can call to make the task fairly simple.

Gates’ explanation for not being as diligent as he should have: “I was unaware I was taking something. I wouldn’t consider myself having to do those things … It doesn’t dawn on you to turn the box over and see the 166 things on the box.”

So, yeah, people make mistakes. When they get caught breaking rules, they have to pay a penalty.

Gates, a nine-time Pro Bowler whose 99 touchdowns are second-most all-time among tight ends, will forfeit almost $1.5 million in salary and forever have to deal with an impugned legacy.

Said Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe in a Sirius XM radio interview: “It calls into question everything that he’s ever accomplished.”

That seems a little much. But that’s what Gates gets.

This will not keep Gates out of the Hall of Fame. But it might prove to be a factor in keeping the Chargers out of the playoffs in 2015. He’s not the only one suffering a consequence.

If that happens – if Danny Woodhead and Stevie Johnson and Ladarius Green can’t fill in alternating as Philip Rivers’ go-to guy – having caused harm to his team will be another part of what Gates must bear.

For now, unlike the black and white of an NFL drug test, we have to consider the entirety of a man’s character.

Gates vowed to move past this. The Chargers believe they will. So will the rest of us.

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