The NFL is not letting sleeping dogs lie, when it comes to the Ray Rice investigation.
Risking punishment from Judge Barbara Jones, who imposed a gag order in connection with the former Baltimore Ravens running back's successful appeal of his indefinite suspension, a league source told profootballtalk.nbcsports.com that it did not lie about Rice's testimony to the NFL.
Baltimore Ravens settle out of court with banished running back Ray Rice
Rice met with NFL official on June 16, 2014 to clarify what happened between Rice and his then-fiancée Janay Palmer at a hotel casino elevator in Atlantic City in February.
"It is completely inaccurate and unfair to say that Judge Jones raised any question about the league's truthfulness or that she 'flatly rejected' the league's version of what happened inside the elevator," the source told Mike Florio of profootballtalk.nbcsports.com.
At issue is testimony given during the appeal hearing that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell "had summoned others who worked on the issue on the morning the in-elevator video emerged to 'ma[k]e sure all of us had the same recollection,' according to Florio. "The source contends that there was nothing nefarious about that effort."
"As for the conspiracy theory, the Commissioner testified that when he saw the second video it showed an incident that was much worse than what he recalled Rice describe in the June meeting," the source said. "He then called in the others to confirm that his recollection was correct, not to somehow 'concoct' a consistent story. And Judge Jones made no finding or suggestion of any such conspiracy. She simply found that Rice 'did not lie' in the June meeting and that the second video was not different enough to justify increasing the discipline that had already been imposed."
The hole in the anonymous source's argument is that Associate NFL Labor Relations Counsel Kevin Manara, NFL senior Vice President of labor policy and government affairs Adolphe Birch and Goodell each testified that Rice told them that Palmer "knocked herself out," profootballtalk.nbcsports.com reported.
Jones concluded that Rice never said that his fiancée knocked herself out and made note of the NFL testimony that Goodell wanted all his lieutenants to "ma[k]e sure all of us had the same recollection" that Rice said "knocked herself out."
But the source countered that the full transcript of Rice's appeal hearing "elimintates the notion that Jones was hinting that the phrase 'knocked herself out' arose from an effort to devise a false narrative aimed at justifying Rice's suspension."
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