In the wake of harsh criticism over the league’s handling of the
Josh Brown case, Roger Goodell is claiming the NFL has moved in the right direction on domestic violence.
“What you see here is
a policy that’s evolved,” Goodell told Gary Myers of the
New York Daily News. “We’ve learned a lot, but these are complex matters. When you talk to the domestic violence experts, these are difficult matters to deal with. You have rights, you have families that you have to be concerned with, privacy issues. Yes, you want to make sure you’re doing everything possible to address these [alleged incidents] when they happen, but you also want to deal with them to prevent them from happening. I think we’ve made tremendous progress. Can we make more and will we make more? Of course.”
Goodell said Brown’s one-game suspension at the start of the season was solely for one incident that the NFL had information about.
“Here’s the issue, the discipline that occurred on the one game was for the event on May of 2015,” Goodell said. “That was the only one that we were able to get of all the different things that we’ve heard. The decision was made by our team after we had the evidence to be able to support the one game. We knew we would get challenged [by the NFL Players Association] and we were able to uphold it.”
Now that additional information alleging other domestic violence incidents has come out, Goodell said the league is investigating that as well.
“That’s what we’ll do now that we have additional information. We’ll aggressively pursue that and apply our personal conduct policy,” said Goodell.
Of course, Brown has now been released by the Giants, and his reputation has been tarnished to the point that no NFL team will sign him again. Any additional discipline the league hands out is irrelevant.
