IRVING, Texas – The appeal hearing of defensive end Greg Hardy's 10-game NFL suspension was set for Thursday morning in Washington D.C.
Once the hearing is complete, the timetable for a ruling is unknown but could take several days based on past appeal processes for other suspended NFL players.
On April 22 the league announced Hardy's 10-game suspension without pay "for conduct detrimental to the league in violation of the NFL Constitution and By-Laws, the NFL Player Contract, and the NFL Personal Conduct Policy." The NFL Players Association immediately filed the appeal. The NFL appointed third-party arbitrator Harold Henderson to hear it.
Until Hardy's suspension goes into effect on Sept. 5, he's eligible to participate in all offseason activities with the team including workouts, OTAs, minicamp and training camp. He has been a regular participant in the offseason program but was scheduled to miss Thursday's voluntary OTA session to attend the appeal hearing.
The Cowboys aren't involved in the appeal. The team has stated that it respects the league's decision to suspend Hardy 10 games following an extensive review and will let the process play out.
"No real comment beyond just supporting him and this is part of the process that he's going to go through in appealing this suspension," Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett said Wednesday. "He and his representatives will handle it as well as they can and we'll see what happens. The biggest thing is to handle it the right way. We're going to try to handle it the right way as an organization and we expect him to handle it the right way as an individual player."
If Hardy's 10-game suspension is upheld, he'd be eligible to make his regular-season Cowboys debut on Thanksgiving against his former team, the Carolina Panthers.
Hardy's new teammates have praised his work ethic and approach to workouts so far.
"He's probably the hardest-working one on the D-Line," rookie defensive end Randy Gregory said. "He does a good job setting the tempo for us and things like that."
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