CHICAGO – The defensive side of the bears, Mario Edwards Jr., was suspended unpaid for the first two games of the 2021 regular season for violating NFL policy on performance-enhancing substances, the league announced Friday.
Edwards Jr. is no longer under contract with the Bears and will be a free agent in March. He will have to comply with the suspension whenever he signs with a team, but will be able to participate in the pre-season games and training.
Edwards Jr. had a career record of four sacks while a member of Bears in 2020.
The NFL is also investigating a legal issue involving Edwards Jr. that resulted from an incident last year at a hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Edwards Jr., 26, received a criminal subpoena on charges of assaulting a woman, according to a spokesman for the Mecklenburg County Public Prosecutor’s Office in North Carolina in December.
The trial date has not yet been set, but the subpoena arose out of a situation at the Hilton Charlotte City Center hotel on October 17, the night before the Bears played against the Carolina Panthers.
Police documents say police officers responded to reports of a woman who beat a man with the hand and scratched his forehead. Edwards and a woman had bruises and scratches and both were listed as victims in the police report.
North Carolina court documents, obtained by TMZ, say the woman in question accused Edwards of hitting her in the eye and dragging her out of her hotel room after she started recording it during an argument. The woman said she was pregnant at the time of the attack and needed hospitalization.
Peter Schaffer, Edwards’ agent, denied that his client was involved in any wrongdoing.