He’s become the poster child for what’s wrong with the league in the eyes of many, an out-of-control professional athlete whose sense of entitlement leads him to believe that rules apply to others than himself.
But the NFL showed surprisingly relative leniency to Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kenny Britt on the heels of his eighth run-in with the law since entering the league in 2009. Just weeks after meeting with him for the second time in a year, Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Thursday that the troubled 23-year-old Britt has been suspended for just one game for repeated violations of the league’s personal conduct policy.
The fourth-year pro out of Rutgers will sit out the Titans’ Sept. 9 season opener against New England before returning for the following week’s game at San Diego.
“It’s actually a gift from God that it’s only a week,” Britt The Tennessean following his team’s 10-6 win over the visiting New Orleans Saints in Thursday night’s preseason finale.
“I’m just happy that God spoke to [Goodell] and put the right thing in his heart, and we move forward. … I just have to take it on the chin, and that is what I’m doing.”
Britt said he has no plans to appeal.
As part of the penalty, he will be docked more than $44,000, which is one-seventeenth of his $755,000 base salary this season. The Titans will designate Britt as Reserve/Suspended so that he will not count against the team’s 53-man roster for the first week.
Britt will not be allowed to work out at the team facility in Nashville during his suspension, but plans to remain in Knoxville and prepare for his first game action since suffering a major knee injury early last season.
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what I was expecting,” he said. “I did know I was in some trouble in the past, and now it is behind me. Now I am happy, this is in the past and I am ready to focus on two weeks from now.”
On July 20, Britt was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence as he was trying to pass through a security gate at the Fort Campbell. It was his eighth incident involving police since the Titans drafted him in 2009. Goodell summoned him to New York for a meeting on Aug. 6.
Britt avoided discipline after last year’s meeting with Goodell because several of the incidents occurred during the NFL lockout in which time there was no collective bargaining agreement between the players and the league. Goodell, however, warned of a suspension should further trouble arise.
Britt was off to strong start last year before suffering a torn right ACL in Sept. 25 game against the Denver Broncos that required season-ending surgery.
