The first person in the Baltimore Ravens organization to address the domestic violence case involving former running back Ray Rice was head coach John Harbaugh. The team's executives followed suit on Wednesday.
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, team president Dick Cass and general manager Ozzie Newsome spoke with Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun and provided their first public comments since terminating Rice's contract on Monday. Bisciotti apologized to Ravens personal seat license holders, suite owners and sponsors on Tuesday in a letter.
Bisciotti remained apologetic during the interview and held himself accountable for how the Rice situation transpired over the past couple of months:
"We all failed. I was kept abreast of every little thing that we were doing here," he said, in the interview conducted by the Baltimore Sun. "It was tough to watch the video that came out Monday. It was embarrassing for all of us to watch the first video that came out months ago. That was embarrassing, that was sad. Monday's video was disgusting and shocking to us."
In regards to the first video and the police report, Cass expressed why immediate action hadn't been taken in disciplining Rice. He told Zrebiec that the league has followed the same protocol for 20 years when it comes to handing down punishments to players engaging in misconduct. They wanted to be prudent in their decision with Rice and opted to collect all of the possible information regarding the incident before imposing discipline.
"There would have been no precedent that I'm aware of where you'd take an established player - a player who had been with you for six years, had been a model citizen, a terrific player, had built up enormous good will in this building and in this community - to terminate a player when he had been charged with simple assault," he added.
The only questionable aspect of the interview was when Newsome and Cass were asked whether the video matched the story Rice told them. The two had differing recollections, which could indicate Rice had indeed lied or the video was very disturbing to Cass.
"Ray had given a story to John [Harbaugh] and I. And what we saw on the video was what Ray said. Ray didn't lie to me. He didn't lie to me," said Newsome.
But as for Cass, he didn't have as much assurance as Newsome did with Rice.
"There's a big difference between reading a report that says he knocked her unconscious or being told that someone had slapped someone and that she had hit her head. That is one version of the facts. That's what we understood to be the case. When you see the video, it just looks very different than what we understood the facts to be."
Roger Goodell agreed with Cass in a separate interview with Christine Brennan of USA Today Sports, noting that the information provided prior to the release of the latest video was ambiguous and wasn't enough to warrant a significant punishment for Rice (after he acknowledged his two-game ban was a mistake). He said that Rice and his representatives told him a different story about what had happened in the elevator than what the video showed him.
Perhaps Rice lied, or told multiple stories. Or perhaps Cass and Goodell were so shocked by the video they were unable to connect the mere verbal speculation with the concrete visual evidence. Whatever the case, the league is going to have to take some sort of responsibility sooner or later.
