ESPN's Outside the Lines ran an article on Friday titled, "Rice Case: Purposeful Misdirection by Team, Scant Investigation by NFL," and seemingly none of the details in the report surprised anybody. The Baltimore Ravens were accused of a cover-up after interviews of more than 20 sources revealed a pattern of misinformation.
Following the release of the report, the Baltimore Ravens immediately issued a statement in response to it:
"The ESPN.com 'Outside the Lines' article contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings. The Ravens will address all of these next week in Baltimore after our trip to Cleveland for Sunday's game against the Browns."
First and foremost, what Baltimore Ravens team president Dick Cass and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell knew prior to Rice's two-game suspension was more clearly acknowledged in the report. Cass was notified by Rice's attorney, Michael J. Diamondstein, of the contents of the elevator video. According to the report, Diamondstein told Cass: "F---ing horrible. Ray knocked her the f--- out." Cass, nor anybody else in the Ravens organization or the NFL, had sought a copy of the video after they were denied the evidence by the Atlantic City Police Department. They looked no further. Nobody asked Diamondstein, the Revel Hotel and Casino, or anyone else (such as security guards) who may have had access to it. Instead, Cass worked with Diamondstein to help avoid Rice going to trial. Sources close to the situation also said that Bisciotti, Cass and Newsome urged Goodell and other league executives to give Rice no more than a two-game ban, which was ultimately what happened.
Additionally, it was reported Rice had told the full story to both the Ravens and Goodell. Four sources told Outside the Lines that "Rice gave Goodell a truthful account that he struck his fiancée," yet Goodell said in an interview after the release of the elevator video that Rice's account provided "ambiguous" information regarding the incident. The first video was somehow not enough for the Ravens or Goodell to hand down a punishment to Rice, but somebody attempted to act on it. According to George Kokinis, the Ravens director of player personnel, coach Harbaugh had urged Bisciotti, Cass and Newsome to immediately release Rice after TMZ released the first video, but his request was swiftly rejected. Then, after the release of the second and more graphic video inside the elevator, the Ravens had Harbaugh hold a press conference to address the issue. The executives remained behind closed doors until they conducted a behind-the-scenes 30-minute interview with the Baltimore Sun on September 10, after which Cass expressed:
"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."
Every executive in position to punish Rice has continuously denied seeing the second video, which might be true, but the fact that the report suggests they could have easily gotten access to it has put them in a bad position. Also, the fact that Rice reportedly told all of them a truthful account of what happened provides more inconsistencies in regards to how Goodell, Bisciotti, Cass and Newsome handled the situation.
Goodell already addressed the Rice situation (and the other legal issues involving NFL players) during a press conference on Friday, and it was largely uninformative and unrevealing. His responses were repetitive, and instead of asking impartial questions, the reporters and journalists seemed to be taking indirect shots at Goodell with their phrasing and tone of voice, which likely angered the commissioner and led to his shunning of multiple queries.
The Ravens executives will address the media this week, and hopefully it will provide a reasonable and accurate account of how they handled the situation in response to the Outside the Lines report. But is it really going to surprise anybody if they deny everything? Again?
UPDATE: The Ravens will hold a press conference on Monday at 4 p.m.
