It's Thanksgiving Eve, and I'm feeling grateful to get to know good people like Marcus Gilbert, the better with which to form a personal judgment for when they do something wrong.
If that comes across as corny, so be it.
It's absolutely wrong to use a performance-enhancing drug, regardless of purpose or intent. I believe Gilbert's statement that he took it accidentally, and I believe Ben Roethlisberger's description that strongly supports that, but one of the chief responsibilities of an elite athlete is caution over what you consume. That applies as far as having people around you who share that same level of responsibility.
This isn't optional. He needed to do better. He let down a championship-caliber team by not doing better.
But anyone branding this man in any broader sense -- dumb, cheater, whatever -- isn't among the many people who consider themselves lucky to know him. He's smart, he's unselfish, and he's good, good, good, all the way through. And when he comes back from the NFL suspension that his carelessness has cost him, be very sure he'll follow through on his stated commitment to being better than ever.
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