Jets second-year DL Nathan Shepherd was suspended six games by the NFL on Tuesday for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances. Shepherd can return to the team Oct. 28 after its game against the Jaguars.

Shepherd was a third-round pick in 2018 out of Fort Hays State. He played a significant role as a rookie but struggled. Shepherd told NFL.com that he failed two tests on June 27 and July 25. He admitted to using a PED to help recover from injuries and to try to gain an edge in impressing the Jets’ new coaching staff.

“All that was going on, I was coming off of a subpar season and a new coaching staff, new playbook, new everything,” Shepherd said to the website. “In my mindset, I didn’t feel very confident with how everything had gone thus far. In my mind, I was so prepared to come into this offseason and have a successful offseason and train very hard. I felt that because of these limitations, I wasn’t going to be able to do that. I made a rash decision, an unwise decision and a selfish decision to look to certain PEDs in order to help me with that recovery process so I would be ready to go.”