Free agent wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins faces potential legal troubles because of one comment. In 2022, the NFL suspended Hopkins – then with the Arizona Cardinals – for six games to start the regular season for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy. He came back in Week 7, played out the season, and moved on to the Tennessee Titans the following year. But cut to 2026, an Instagram post accused former Cardinals general manager Steve Keim of having ties with a fraud scheme. Hopkins found that post and dropped a comment that has since been deleted.

“I got set up when I played for his team and lost 13 million,” Hopkins commented. “Skeme Slime was my GM, contaminated drug test go figure how that happened.”

Keim saw the comment, decided to speak up against it, and also signaled legal action against Hopkins for his comment.

“DeAndre Hopkins recently published and then deleted a statement falsely suggesting that I was responsible for contaminating or manipulating the drug test associated with his 2022 NFL suspension,” Keim said in a statement to Pro Football Talk. “That accusation is completely false.

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“I did not contaminate, alter, manipulate, interfere with, or cause anyone else to interfere with DeAndre’s drug test or its results. I did not ‘set him up’ for a suspension, and I had no involvement in causing the test result that led to his suspension.

“Accusing someone of deliberately interfering with an NFL drug test is an extraordinarily serious allegation. It attacks my integrity, my professional reputation, and the work I spent decades building in the National Football League. The fact that the statement was later deleted does not undo the damage caused by publishing it to a large public audience…

“I have no intention of engaging in a public back-and-forth or litigating this issue on social media. But I will also not remain silent when I am falsely accused of conduct that I did not commit.”

Now, this isn’t the first time Hopkins has pushed back on the PED test results. In July 2022, he spoke to ArizonaSports.com and pushed back on the league’s policy, while pointing to external contamination.

“I’ve never taken any of that kind of stuff,” he’d said. “If you know about what it is, it can be in shampoo, it can be in a lot of different things. Obviously, the NFL is very black and white, so of course, I wish the rule wasn’t so black and white. It is what it is.”

Hopkins had reportedly tested positive for trace of having 0.134% Ostarine in his system. The league’s benchmark was set at less than 0.1%. Hopkins had appealed his suspension, but eventually backed down from the appeal.

But this time, he connected Steve Keim’s name to the incident, sparking widespread speculation and headlines. The deleted comment does nothing to mend the rift that has now formed between Hopkins and his former GM, and Keim’s next move will come directly through his attorney.