Roger Goodell Says Public Doesn't Understand NFL Handling Of Domestic Violence Cases

Roger Goodell saw the hole the NFL had dug for itself during the Josh Brown domestic violence mess and decided to grab a shovel and keep digging. During an interview with the BBC’s Richard Conway over the weekend, Goodell cited the public’s “misunderstanding” of how the league goes about punishing domestic violence.

Here’s his full response:

"“I understand the public’s misunderstanding of those things and how that can be difficult for them to understand how we get to those positions. But those are things that we have to do. I think it’s a lot deeper and a lot more complicated than it appears but it gets a lot of focus.”"

As for how the Josh Brown mess developed, Goodell had an answer for that too:

"“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 basically, Goodell’s defense is that he couldn’t get one of the teams in his league or the police to turn over information to him. I’m gonna go out on a limb there and call that a load of horse manure. Especially since NFL security helped Brown’s wife switch hotel rooms when he was harassing her at the Pro Bowl. The league office should have know then that this was serious enough to warrant a long suspension. Instead, the NFL buried the story and later gave Brown a one-game suspension.

The league and the New York Giants continue to look worse as more information comes out about Brown’s history with domestic violence. I’m fairly certain no one will be satisfied with Goodell’s response so far.