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NFL shifts blame for Zeke suspension to police and NFLPA
Jon Durr/Getty Images

NFL shifts blame for Zeke suspension to police and NFLPA

Ezekiel Elliott may very well see his six-game suspension reduced. One would think, should that happen, it’d be a setback for NFL executives, but it’s unlikely they would see it that way. By their logic, erring on the side of caution with a six-game suspension, the NFL avoids another media blitz focused on how the NFL is unconcerned with domestic violence. Avoiding a continuation of that damning narrative is paramount, even if it comes at the cost of undermining whatever credibility remains in the league’s dealings with DV.  

Sure, Jerry Jones and a few other aggrieved owners are privately griping about Roger Goodell’s heavy handed methods behind closed doors, but this happens every time there’s executive overreach in the NFL. None of them are going to support removing the commissioner so long as profits are rolling on. With the league being dinged with the results of the latest CTE study and the reaction to Colin Kaepernick being unemployed, the NFL could hardly afford to still appear callous to the issue of domestic violence.

Elliott’s defenders point to the fact that he has never been charged with a crime. Of course, there is precedent in NFL discipline for dealing with just such a situation. In 2010, the league suspended Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger after he had been accused of sexual assault for the second time in three years, despite not having been charged in either case. That suspension was initially also for six games, though there was a clause that reduced it to four with a vague criterion that basically amounted to good behavior.

That Elliott’s punishment is also six games putatively has something to do with standard for domestic violence set out by the NFL in the wake of the Ray Rice and Greg Hardy incidents of 2014. The league, however, in the years since this standard was announced has often disregarded the six-game standard when meting out punishment.

The NFL would now have you believe the Roethlisberger decision was more or less an arbitrary call, sort of the commissioner winging it, whereas the suspensions handed out post-2014 are the result of assiduous work by an NFL investigation that the league assumes is superior to conventional law enforcement.

Unsurprisingly, that arrogance quickly came back to bite the league. Last year, the NFL issued Giants kicker Josh Brown a one-game suspension to start the 2016 season despite multiple arrests, once on a domestic violence charge and another a few months later for violating a protective order for his wife. Brown served his suspension, but was later released by the Giants following several reports about the troubling details the NFL disregarded in deciding to use the softer punishment, including league security needing to intervene in an attempted attack by Brown on his wife at the previous season’s Pro Bowl.

The league maintains that it has sufficient evidence to justify Elliott’s six-game suspension, specifically three incidents where he used force against his ex-girlfriend. I’ll leave that to the appeals process to decide, but ultimately I can’t imagine the NFL would be that bothered even if the suspension is reduced or nullified entirely, and the latter of those is unlikely. A star player would return earlier, and the narrative wouldn’t about how the league low-balled punishment for an abuser. It would be about how the NFL was more harsh than it should have been. It wouldn’t sow any more confidence in the league’s ability to adjudicate these matters, but it’s probably the scenario with less bad press. The NFL is obsessed with optics, and if the cost is throwing one player under the bus, well, for them that’s a small price to pay.

That the NFL flouts the conclusions of law enforcement has less to do with getting matters right than it is the maintaining the excuse that got the league and commissioner Roger Goodell through the Ray Rice scandal, arguably the signature foul-up of the many in Goodell’s 11-year tenure as commissioner.

With Rice, the NFL claimed that New Jersey police would not turn over the infamous elevator footage that shocked the country and made the NFL look extremely permissive on domestic violence. There was a report about how the NFL received a copy of the video at its headquarters mailed privately by a law enforcement official but there was no way to prove anyone had viewed it. Absent that, they were in the clear and they had their path forward. The NFL beefed up its investigation force, brought in former DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier, among others, to conduct their own findings.

Few would argue that police and the courts don’t have deficiencies when it comes to investigating domestic violence, but the NFL has proved itself no more reliable in the instances that it has superseded the court system with its punishment of players. The league botched the Josh Brown case, not even two years after the Ray Rice scandal. This time it’s erring on the side of caution, which in this case means actually enforcing the six-game standard, even if there isn’t the requisite conviction.

Early this week, Elliott’s father entered the fray by tweeting a list of claims from the case meant to cast doubt on the accuser.

Whether Elliott’s appeal is effective remains to be seen, the strategy of his camp will revolve around questioning the accuser’s testimony. That means a high-profile case where the accuser’s credibility and motives are publicly attacked. It also means a legion of fans almost certainly echoing nasty myths about accusers: that they’re vindictive or secretly after something. The NFL understands this, which is why it’s tried to preemptively shift the blame for that inevitability onto the players’ union.

Shifting the crass consequences for one’s own muddled policies onto the union is incredibly cynical, even for the NFL. After all, the impending ugliness could have been avoided if the league had exhibited any sort of consistency or trustworthiness on the issue. The NFL wants everyone to believe its problems enforcing domestic violence punishment is the fault of inadequate police efforts, or a ruthless players’ union. So it’s possible a woman’s reputation could get dragged through the mud, or a player had been unfairly punished, all so the NFL can play it safe and pass the buck.

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