As the NFL has displayed all the merits of what not to do when it comes to conducting investigations, protecting players and support charity, the shield is once continues to amaze at just how many utter fuck ups a League and commissioner can accomplish over a generally short amount of time.
Front and center this time around is the Josh Brown debacle and the NFL either doing one of two things, were totally reactionary and fumbled (no pun intended) the investigation as they’ve done many times before. Or they systematically tried to cover up and tried to play dumb when it came to how much they actually knew about Brown kicking the utter shit out of his wife on what seemed to be a daily basis.
Luckily for the NFL, Roger Goodell had a chance to look like a total freaking fool (as he’s done so many times before) but on an international level being that the Rams are taking on the Giants in London Sunday.
Here’s what the Commish told BBC Sport reporter Richard Conway about the whole Josh Brown mess and why the NFL was justified in their one-game suspension of the dirtbag:
Conway: Lots of positives but it has also been a tumultuous year in terms of the issues the NFL have had to deal with and I know this week with Josh Brown, that’s another thing that has come back as an issue, that’s perhaps overshadowing this weekend in terms of how the League deals with domestic violence. Are you happy in terms of Josh Brown with the investigation that was carried out and the one game punishment that was given to him?
Goodell: Well you have to go and get the facts. We have asked repeatedly for those facts and the information that’s been gathered by law enforcement both orally and in writing. And we weren’t able to get access to it. So you have to make decisions on whatever information you have. We take this issue incredibly seriously. This is something we’ve been working on with policy changes, to educating our players to make sure they understand how they deal with issues with their family, give them resources to be able to deal with this. But when it happens we’re not going to tolerate it. So we have some new information here, we’ll evaluate that in the context of our policy and we’ll take it from there.
So it would appear the information the NFL failed to obtain because of circumstances beyond their control, like being denied access resulted in a very lax one game suspension for Brown back on August 17th.
The only problem with this is the NFL and especially Roger Goodell couldn’t be full of more shit.
First of all Deadspin discovered the NFL through their private investigator Rob Agnew was being fed information from a King County Sheriff as early as May 23, 2015. Brown was arrested the day prior in Washington and upon his arrest his now ex-wife Molly Brown told authorities of the 20 previous times she was abused by him which according to her started in 2009 when she was pregnant with the couples daughter.
Now the NFL apparently didn’t get the full report until August 19th due to the May 2015 incident still being under investigation. Ironically – as Deadspin notes – August 19th was also the same day the New York Daily News documented in their own article the abuse Molly Brown underwent while with the Giants kicker. So not only did the NFL have the information damning and worthy enough to warrant more than a one game suspension, the media had it as well.
Now granted the NFL already acted prior to the apparent big release of information on the domestic violence. However based off how the investigation with Ray Rice in 2014 you’d figure the NFL would take different steps this time around. Obviously that wasn’t the case as the League took further steps only today when Brown was placed on the commissioners exempt list and basically suspended indefinitely.
Remember though, this is the same league and same commissioner that had plenty of high-profile domestic issues aside from the Ray Rice episode to fuck up and learn from. Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson are the next obvious two yet the NFL still managed to screw the Josh Brown one up as well.
Also keep in mind the NFL and Roger Goodell are the same two entities that suspended Tom Brady four games because of deflated footballs. They’re also the same two jackasses that continue to fine players for celebrating touchdowns.
But yeah, those pesky domestic violence issues. They’re a bitch.