The NFL Never Saw The Brutal Ray Rice Elevator Video Because They Avoided It Like The Plague

Ray Rice was cut and suspended yesterday after a damning video of the former Baltimore Ravens running back slugging his girlfriend (now wife) surfaced online. The media’s takes on the fallout have ranged from scathing to cartoonish to buffoonish, and we still don’t have a clear answer to one of the biggest questions surrounding the incident: Did the NFL see the ugly footage before it was published?

The NFL maintains it never saw the brutal video prior to Monday, but reports have varied as to whether that’s accurate. According to TMZ, which has inexplicably turned into the the league’s moral watchdog, the NFL might be telling the truth about not seeing the video — but if so, their ignorance was 100% willful. The league knew about the footage, and could have easily acquired it, if they wanted to:

Sources connected with the Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City tell TMZ Sports … NO ONE from the NFL ever asked for the video inside the elevator … video that was compelling enough to get Rice instantly fired.

Sources who worked at the casino at the time of the incident tell us … if the NFL had asked for the video, they would have gladly complied.

More ellipses-heavy reporting from TMZ concludes that everyone involved with the case had a copy of the footage except for the people in a position to professionally discipline Rice:

Multiple sources tell TMZ Sports … the casino made a copy of the elevator surveillance video for police. We’re also told Rice’s lawyer had a copy of the video which he got in the criminal case.

An NFL source tells us they requested “any and all information” from law enforcement in the criminal case but got nothing because it was a pending case. But the NFL had other options … namely going to the casino or Rice’s lawyer — but the NFL never bothered to ask.

You could make the argument that the NFL had no idea what they were doing. But you could just as easily say they knew exactly what they were doing. The latter is more likely, and much worse.

×