In this excellent piece by Mike Freeman from Bleacher Report about Joe Mixon’s draft stock rising, I found this tidbit at the end of it very interesting.
The league office is watching this situation closely. They may deny this, but based on interviews I’ve done, the NFL doesn’t want Mixon drafted either, feeling it would undermine the league’s efforts to curb violence against women.
To some in football, what happens with Mixon is a test. Rice was once a line—a video line—few in the NFL thought would ever be crossed again. No one thought a player caught committing an act of violence on video would ever have a career in football.
It’s possible Mixon may move that line.
I understand how public relations works, so don’t confuse what I am about to say with me not understanding why the NFL wants to blackball Joe Mixon like they did Ray Rice.
I get it, but hypocrisy bothers me.
The NFL is filled with players with sketchy and downright criminal past. Those players are routinely promoted by the NFL or in a case like Brandon Marshall given jobs by the NFL.
My question is if Brandon Marshall, Ben Roethlisberger (would likely raped multiple women), Tyreek Hill, Frank Clark, Terrell Suggs and many others get multiple chances to change, why can’t Joe Mixon be given ONE CHANCE?
That is all Mixon deserves is a chance to prove that he isn’t the person we all saw on that video tape. Someone like Marshall had several bouts of domestic violence before getting his life in order to the point as I said before the NFL trots him out on TV all the time.
After Roethlisberger was suspended after paying off multiple women to not press charges against him, he was allowed to rehabilitate his reputation and now no one mentions it at all.
While there was no video of Tyreek Hill and Frank Clark’s abuse the descriptions were as disturbing if not more disturbing than the Mixon video.
I understand that video changes things, because we are a visual society, but while two wrongs don’t make a right, beating up a pregnant woman you supposedly love in my mind is more egregious that having an argument and moment of very bad judgment after being struck by someone you don’t know. Frank Clark torturing and beating a woman in a hotel room for hours is different than a snap judgment bad decision.
I understand the NFL’s reasoning, doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. Either support Mixon’s efforts to be a better person or don’t promote any player who has had these issues in the past.