Footage of Ray Rice knocking his then-fiancée unconscious in an Atlantic City casino was revealed by TMZ on Monday, prompting the Ravens and the NFL to finally institute a harsher punishment on the running back, who was released by Baltimore and indefinitely suspended by the league. In the aftermath of the new video and the increased penalties for Rice, the NFL and the Ravens are facing increased scrutiny about just how much they knew about the case, and whether or not they’d actually seen that elevator footage before the public did on Monday.
Here are the latest links and developments related to Rice, the NFL’s role in the incident, and the running back’s future (or lack thereof) in the NFL:
- A report from TMZ this morning revealed that the NFL never approached the Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City about acquiring the elevator security footage, with sources from the casino suggesting that the Revel would have “gladly complied” if such a request had been made.
- In a statement today, the NFL didn’t deny that allegation, indicating that the request for the video of the incident was only submitted to the police. “As we said yesterday: We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator,” the NFL’s statement reads, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. “That video was not made available to us.”
- Sources tell Ed Werder of ESPN.com (Twitter link) that Rice’s description to the Ravens of what happened in the elevator was consistent with what the footage showed, but that the brutality of it still “stunned” the team’s ownership. While that may be true of Rice’s account of the events to Ravens management, any notion that Rice was entirely honest to his teammates about what happened in that elevator is “totally inaccurate,” tweets Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report.
- Appearing on CBS This Morning, Patriots owner Robert Kraft said he’d be “shocked” if another team signed Rice, adding that he doesn’t believe the running back will play another game in the NFL. Kraft also praised commissioner Roger Goodell for his handling of the situation, noting that Goodell hadn’t seen the elevator footage before yesterday.
- Janay Rice, Ray’s now-wife, released a statement via Instagram in which she blamed the media for causing her family pain and taking away her husband’s job. Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun has the full details.
- In the view of Mike Florio, the NFL needs to hire an independent third-party investigator to look into the Ravens’ and the league’s investigations of the Rice incident to find out exactly who knew what, and when. “At this point,” Florio writes, “the only way to [get the truth] is to retain someone with no stake in the outcome to find out precisely how the team and the league got to this point.”