How Does New NFL CBA Impact Randy Gregory's Cowboys Comeback Plan?

How Does the NFL's New CBA Agreement Impact Randy Gregory's Dallas Cowboys Comeback Plan?

FRISCO - Marijuana has been decriminalized by the NFL. Does that speed up the reinstatement and return to football of suspended defensive end Randy Gregory?

While the Dallas Cowboys' optimism here is real ... not so fast.

"I'm hopeful of a return to football in 2020,'' Gregory told NFL Network's Jane Slater recently.

That's a step forward, even as the February reports of him having submitted to the NFL his request for reinstatement. That's an important detail because of previous entanglements, delays and unplugging of plans regarding paperwork.

But now comes another theoretical step forward. The NFL's new CBA agreement effectively decriminalizes marijuana, which Gregory is involved with at least in part due to psychological issues. Under the new policy, pot won't get a player suspended. And the testing period is two-weeks long at the start of training camp rather than four-months long. And the threshold for a positive test has been raised from 35 to 150 nanograms of THC.

This doesn't free Gregory of his personal issues. But optimism? Yes - especially because the new focus will be on "treatment'' rather than "punishment,'' as a source phrases it to CowboysSI.com.

Still, there are obstacles.

On July 11, we broke the detailed story of Randy Gregory's NFL petition-for-reinstatement plan. The paperwork was to be submitted four days later, on July 15. Ten days later, we wrote a second story quoting two members of the suspended Dallas Cowboys player's legal team, both of whom spoke with optimism about the process.

Then months passed. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was required to issue a judgment within 60 days of a player's submission - and that judgment never came.

So ... what happened? And what's happening now?

In my many stories on and my many conversations with Gregory, the gifted former second-round pick who struggles with issues that include marijuana use, we've stressed that this really needs to be about Gregory the person rather than Gregory the football player.

"I'm working very hard to get to a place where I can be in control,'' Gregory told us not long ago. "It will be a happier place.''

Can that place be back with the Dallas Cowboys, the employer with whom he retains an official tie? Colleague Bryan Broaddus suggests more positive news might arrive in June.

The Cowboys still have Gregory's rights, of course, and he's played very little football over the course of his checkered career. But Cowboys ownership believes in him. Maybe the coming decriminalization of marijuana in the new CBA helps him, too. But most of all, the story here will be that Randy Gregory has found a "happier place'' ... where playing in the NFL is part of the happiness.