{"id":216530,"date":"2025-10-16T05:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216530\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T05:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:01:07","slug":"suspension-of-lions-safety-brian-branch-upheld-upon-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216530\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspension of Lions safety Brian Branch upheld upon appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The one-game suspension of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/detroit-lions\/308\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/detroit-lions\/308\" target=\"_blank\">Detroit Lions<\/a> safety <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/player\/brian-branch\/985695\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/player\/brian-branch\/985695\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Branch<\/a> was upheld upon appeal Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The hearing officer was Jordy Nelson, who was jointly appointed by the NFL and the NFL Players Association.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The NFL on Monday suspended Branch for one game without pay for unsportsmanlike conduct after he struck <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/kansas-city-chiefs\/321\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/kansas-city-chiefs\/321\" target=\"_blank\">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> wide receiver <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/player\/juju-smith-schuster\/257490\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/player\/juju-smith-schuster\/257490\" target=\"_blank\">JuJu Smith-Schuster<\/a> and set off a brief fight Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cYour aggressive, non-football act was entirely unwarranted, posed a serious risk of injury, and clearly violated the standards of conduct and sportsmanship expected of NFL players,\u201d NFL vice president of football operations Jon Runyan wrote in a letter to Branch explaining the suspension. \u201cYour conduct reflected poorly on the NFL and has no place in our game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Branch will miss the Lions\u2019 game Monday night against the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/tampa-bay-buccaneers\/313\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nfl\/team-page\/tampa-bay-buccaneers\/313\" target=\"_blank\">Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> and will be eligible to return to the active roster the following day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">ESPN\u2019s Eric Woodyard and The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The one-game suspension of Detroit Lions safety Brian Branch was upheld upon appeal Wednesday. The hearing officer was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[104635,49,48,104636,514,82],"class_list":["post-216530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-brian-branch-sports-football-player-player-statscom-1231140","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-detroit-lions-sports-football-team-team-statscom-334","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}