A Pittsburgh judge may have let Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle Alameda Ta\’amu off with a slap on the wrist on Thursday, but now he must wait and see whether or not the league office will do the same, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
Ta\’amu received 18 months probation On Thursday after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, and drunk driving stemming from his incident downtown this past October. In addition to the 18 months, the Steelers fourth-round draft pick from last April must pay for the court cost and damage that he caused, and spend four days in a DUI program in lieu of spending it behind bars.
According to the report by Florio, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello says the league will review Ta\’amu\’s case to see whether or not any additional discipline will be handed down for violating the personal-conduct policy or the substance-abuse policy.
Ta\’amu was suspended without pay for two weeks by the Steelers immediately following the incident, and as Florio points out, the punishment wasn’t challenged by the player or the NFLPA in the hopes that a second suspension from the league wouldn’t be imposed.
While this was Ta\’amu\’s first incident since coming into the league last year, it isn\’t his first DUI, as he was also charged with driving under the influence in October 2011 for an incident that occurred Dec. 12, 2009, when he was playing for the University of Washington. Prosecutors initially charged Ta\’amu with driving under the influence, but as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported back in October, he instead later pleaded guilty to negligent driving, and sentenced to one day in a community-work program and ordered to pay a $350 fine.
With it only being April, the league will be in no hurry to hand down its decision on Ta\’amu, and it wouldn\’t be surprising to hear sometime soon that he has been summoned to New York to meet with commissioner Roger Goodell.
Should Ta\’amu wind up being suspended, you would think that he would only get one or two games being as he has already lost two paychecks from the Steelers. Time, as they say, will tell.
