NFL Players Association News & Rumors

Following Friday’s announcement that Ray Rice‘s indefinite suspension has been overturned, allowing him the freedom to sign with any team, NFL general counsel Jeff Pash issued a memo to the chief executives and presidents of each of the NFL’s 32 teams. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has obtained a copy of that memo, a portion of which reads as follows:

“Earlier today, retired federal judge Barbara Jones issued her decision in the appeal filed by the NFLPA from the indefinite suspension imposed on Ray Rice. Judge Jones vacated the indefinite suspension, finding that Mr. Rice did not mislead the Commissioner in describing his actions toward Janay Palmer, who was his fiancée. The decision turned on whether Mr. Rice told the Commissioner that he “hit” Miss Palmer (rather than that he “slapped” her) and whether he claimed that she “knocked herself out” by striking her head in the elevator. Judge Jones found that when he met with the Commissioner last June, Mr. Rice sufficiently described his conduct and that his description was not misleading when compared to the later release of the videotape from inside the hotel elevator.

​No part of Judge Jones’s decision questions the Commissioner’s honesty or integrity, nor his good faith consideration of the issue when he imposed the indefinite suspension on Mr. Rice. Nor is there any suggestion that the Commissioner had seen the video from inside the elevator before it became public, or knew of the contents of the video.

​Judge Jones’s decision ends the disciplinary proceedings relating to Ray Rice. He remains free to sign with a contract and is eligible to participate without restriction upon signing a contract.

​The decision has no bearing on the current work on a revised Personal Conduct Policy, nor on the initiatives announced by the Commissioner on August 28 regarding domestic violence and sexual assault. Similarly, the decision is limited to Ray Rice and should have no effect on any other pending or prospective disciplinary matters.”

The memo, which goes on for several more paragraphs, appears designed to alleviate any concerns team owners may have about Roger Goodell‘s role in the disciplinary process for personal conduct violations. The statement portrays Goodell as a victim of semantics rather than a commissioner who deliberately and arbitrarily punished Rice twice for the same violation and attempted to justify the ruling after the fact.

While that stance doesn’t come as a surprise, it’s still likely a disappointment for the Players Association. Rather than Rice’s case representing a turning point for personal conduct issues and the relationship between the league and its players, it appears the NFL will simply try to paint it as an isolated incident, an aberration that doesn’t reflect a larger systemic problem with the league’s disciplinary process.

The NFL Players Association got a win of sorts today when Judge Barbara S. Jones overturned the league’s indefinite suspension of former Ravens running back Ray Rice, but the decision won’t necessarily result in any major changes to the NFL’s disciplinary process. Tom Pelissero of USA Today reports (via Twitter) that the league expects to complete and announce a new personal conduct policy “in the weeks ahead,” and it remains to be seen exactly how much input the union will have on that new policy.

According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the NFLPA fears that the NFL will unilaterally implement a new conduct policy without any collective bargaining – and without accounting for the union’s objecting – following the next ownership meetings, which are scheduled for December 10. While that new policy might be an improvement on the current one, the league and commissioner Roger Goodell may not concede to independent arbitration for disciplinary matters and appeals, in which case we could see more cases like Rice’s, where the disciplinary process is somewhat arbitrary.

For the NFLPA’s part, president Eric Winston says the players just want to be involved in the creation of the new conduct policy, per Pelissero.

“If they want the buy-in of the players, sit down at the table with us and bargain,” Winston said. “If not, then they’re going to unilaterally do this, they’re going to keep messing up the game and we’re going to keep talking about these things, unfortunately, instead of a big matchup on Sunday …. Every player has rights. We’re not against discipline, and we’ve never been against discipline. But that discipline needs to be carried out in the proper fashion, within the rights both sides have negotiated.”

Rice’s suspension is far from the first case in which the NFL has issued a ruling that had no precedent and didn’t match up with the rules in the current conduct policy. Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is embroiled in a similar situation now, having agreed to be placed on the exempt list, believing the time served would help alleviate any additional suspension. His suspension is currently under appeal, with a hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Still, in the case of Rice, a third party (Jones) called out Goodell and the league for an “arbitrary” process, and the NFLPA is hoping the ruling draws attention to what the union sees as a disturbing pattern.

“It’s starting to become a pattern now,” Winston said. “We’re having a lot of this overreaching, lack of due process, and so now (the league says), ‘Let’s make changes. Well, we only want to make the changes we want to make.’

“I’m not happy about this,” Winston said of today’s ruling. “There’s not a winner here. The judge said we were right, but we didn’t win. There’s been way too many of these.“