There’s a passage in Sue L. Robinson’s 15-page decision on Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson that cuts to the heart of how she felt the NFL wanted the disciplinary process to go. It’s one that can also illuminate where things go next.
“The NFL may be a ‘forward-facing’ organization, but it is not necessarily a forward-looking one,” she wrote. “Just as the NFL responded to violent conduct after a public outcry, so it seems the NFL is responding to yet another public outcry about Mr. Watson’s conduct. At least in the former situation, the Policy was changed and applied proactively. Here, the NFL is attempting to impose a more dramatic shift in its culture without the benefit of fair notice to—and consistency of consequence for—those in the NFL subject to the Policy.”
The previous case Robinson is referencing in that passage is Ray Rice’s. You likely remember how that one went. The league initially suspended Rice in July 2014 for two games. There was, to use Robinson’s term, public outcry over the leniency in such a serious case. The video of him assaulting his then fiancé came out that September, bringing a visual to just how serious a case it was. The NFL changed its policy on domestic violence in the aftermath of the video becoming public.
That’s important because, even as the league was scolded by the arbitrator it jointly appointed with the union for worrying too much about what people on the outside think, there’s no way public opinion be a major factor as the NFL takes its 72 hours to decide whether it should appeal Robinson’s decision to suspend Watson for six games, and whether it should be Roger Goodell or a designee appointed by him hearing the appeal.
This might seem simple—six games isn’t close to the year-long suspension the NFL wanted, and so it makes sense the league would exercise its power and overturn Robinson’s sanctions.
But there’s a lot more to the position that the league finds itself in.
