What are the odds the suspension gets reduced?
6 games seems like a lot for such a flimsy case against Elliot. Maybe reduced to 3 or 4?
I don't know how you reduce it in a principled way. The league has put out a letter that says it conducted an investigation, and based on corroborated evidence, has concluded that on more that one occasion the guy physically assaulted and injured an intimate partner.
To reduce it, you would need some kind of mitigation. What mitigation could Elliott offer at an appeal? He's pretty much locked in to the it-didn't-happen, these-witnesses-are-not-credible defense. If he prevails on that defense, the suspension should be knocked down to nothing and he should be exonerated. If he doesn't, it's hard to come up with a principled basis for reducing the penalty.
What do you say? "Elliott in his appeal raised more doubts about whether this really happened, so now we're not as sure, so just in case it didn't happen, we reduce it to 4." You can't do that.
Nor can you say, "well maybe 6 is too much for this kind of domestic violence, 4 is better." Then you get everyone on earth writing the story that say, "well, I guess domestic violence isn't as bad as that football bullshit." I don't think the league is all that up for seeing that story, which is probably why it has now decided that 6 is the right number for this kind of domestic violence.
To make a mitigation argument that would permit a principled reduction, it would have to involve some kind of extenuating circumstances, or maybe he could show that only one of the occurrences is genuine, and he could plead for mercy for an isolated incident. Nothing else really would seem to justify any result other than a binary one -- either it happened or it didn't.
That said, there's the Jerry Jones element, and "principled" and the NFL don't really go together. So, in the end, I agree -- I fully expect it to be reduced to 4 games.
