GREEN BAY, Wis. – On the same day the NFL announced it has closed its investigation into alleged performance-enhancing drug use by Peyton Manning, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy sounded optimistic two of his players named in the report also would be exonerated.
The league still plans to interview Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers, who were scheduled to report to Packers training camp on Monday.
“I have not talked to them recently [about the investigation]; I talked to them back in the season when it first came out, and frankly I don't have anything else to really report on it,” McCarthy said Monday. “I have no reason to be concerned based on the conversations I’ve been a part of.”
However, the league made it clear in the Manning statement that they plan to continue their investigation into other players named in the Al-Jazeera America report despite saying it "found no credible evidence" of allegations against the now-retired quarterback. The NFL said Manning and his wife, Ashley, who was alleged to have received shipments of human growth hormone, were “fully cooperative with the investigation.”
In its statement on Monday, the NFL said the allegations made against other players “involve different lines of inquiry and witnesses” than Manning’s did.
It’s unclear whether Matthews and Peppers have been willing to cooperate.
They, along with former Packers linebacker Mike Neal (who is not currently on an NFL roster), denied their involvement when the report first surfaced in December.
"I think it's bulls---, to be completely honest with you," Matthews said on Dec. 27. "It's 100 percent falsified, fabricated information. I don't who this guy is. I couldn't tell you what he looks like. I've never talked with him. I've never communicated with him. So for him to bring my name up like that, which appears to be out of thin air, it's bulls---, for a lack of a better term.
"I work hard on my reputation, and really that's all I have," Matthews added. "For seven years, I've worked my ass off. For this guy to say those type of things, it's just not true, and especially for him to recant everything that he said, too, I think it really just goes to show the [type of] source he is, as well. The truth will come out, and I'm not worried about it, because I carry myself a certain way, and that is the right way."