Keenan Allen, a longtime NFL player who recently signed with the Indianapolis Colts, was arrested early Sunday for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, police said.
Page A6From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
NFL box score for the week: one strangulation charge, one assault charge, one DUI.
As it ran on the front
This reporter has broadcast professional football since the leather-helmet epoch, and never has this reporter witnessed a single twenty-four-hour news cycle deposit three men of considerable athletic renown onto the ledgers of law enforcement and the National Football League simultaneously. Consider the specimen at hand: Josh Jacobs, the bruising featured tailback of the Green Bay Packers — a franchise, this reporter will remind the audience, that last hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in the frozen January of 1968, under Mister Vince Lombardi's own stern tutelage — now finds himself on what the League Office, in its infinite bureaucratic delicacy, terms the Commissioner's Exempt List, on account of two misdemeanor charges stemming from an arrest for strangulation.
“Gus, the Packers hoisted that trophy as recently as February of 2011, Super Bowl forty-five, thirty-one to twenty-five over the Pittsburgh Steelers, in Arlington, Texas. Nineteen sixty-eight was Lombardi's finale, not the franchise's.” — Trudy
…(cont) This reporter continues. Down in Fort Worth, the Horned Frogs of the Big Ten Conference have dismissed safety Jacob Fields, now under arrest on an assault charge for allegedly attacking a teammate — a sideline altercation of a magnitude this reporter has not witnessed since the leather-helmet epoch previously referenced.
“Sugar, TCU plays in the Big 12. Has for its entire modern history.” — Trudy
And in Indianapolis, Colts wide receiver Keenan Allen has been arrested on charges of drunken driving, rounding out what this reporter is prepared to declare, on the record, a complete box score for the week: one strangulation charge, one assault charge, one driving-under-the-influence charge, and zero games actually played by any of the three men in question.
The League's Commissioner's Exempt List permits a player to continue drawing full salary while sidelined pending review, a provision this reporter finds entirely sensible, dignified, and, above all, generous to all parties involved.
“It's paid leave, Gus. The men keep collecting NFL paychecks while the legal system sorts out three separate arrests in three separate cities. That is the whole story, and it doesn't need the trophy or the conference to make the point.” — Trudy
This reporter yields the remainder of the broadcast to the sports ticker, which this reporter notes, for the record, does not require correction.
“Three players, three arrests in one news cycle, and the league's answer is full pay while it 'reviews.' That's not accountability, that's a paid vacation with the locker still assigned. Everybody in that meeting already knows how this ends.”
“The Commissioner's Exempt List is not a punishment, it's due process — the players keep their paychecks precisely because nothing's been proven yet, and, well, three of them in one week does start to look like a pattern, doesn't it. No, forget I said that.”
The receipts
Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs was reportedly set to hit the Commissioner's Exempt List ahead of the start of the 2026 NFL season.
He is accused of punching his teammate in the locker room earlier this month.
Green Bay's backfield is facing uncertainty entering Week 1, with Jacobs prohibited from practicing or attending games
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.