Josh Gordon has played just five games since 2013—and none in the last three seasons—but his request for reinstatement to the NFL after his latest banishment for a drug-policy violation will have to wait.
Gordon has been suspended numerous times since entering the NFL in 2012. His latest suspension began last September, when he checked himself into rehab just before he returned from a four-game ban that was a condition of his reinstatement from a one-year suspension that had kept him off the field for all of 2015.
It was not immediately clear why the NFL denied Gordon’s latest reinstatement. In March 2016, he was denied because of a reported failed drug test, though he reapplied a short time later and commissioner Roger Goodell granted his conditional reinstatement in July.
This past March, Browns executive VP of football operations Sashi Brown suggested the team would be open to welcoming Gordon back if the league were to reinstate him. Gordon’s next chance to apply will be sometime this fall.