Dallas Cowboys: Ezekiel Elliott suspension sets ridiculous precedent

The NFL announced Friday that Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott will miss the team’s first six games due to domestic violence allegations. When you really look at it, this decision makes no sense and sends the wrong message.

The Dallas Cowboys will be without the services of running back Ezekiel Elliott for six games to open the 2017 season. Thanks to a decision handed down by the NFL on Friday, Elliott will now have to appeal the decision in an attempt to reduce his sentence. But with a decision like this, what exactly is the NFL really telling its players?

You’re guilty until proven innocent

The constitution of this great nation was partly built on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” This of course, was designed to put the burden of proof on those looking to lock up someone for alleged transgressions. It’s a pretty simple concept, really. If you can prove person A committed the crime, then they will face their sentence. But only the National Football League, the business that “owns an entire day of the week” can pull off this kind of bullying.

Rather than allow the case against Mr. Elliott to play out in the courtrooms, they want to protect their “image” and their “brand” by throwing him against the wall for something that hasn’t even been successfully proven, yet. She’s posted cell phone pics, but whether or not those are actual evidence of the allegations are for the legal system to decide. It’s not up to some guy in a suit that runs a professional sports league. But when that guy in a suit can’t make up his mind, he’ll just use delay tactics.

We will issue a penalty only once peer pressure tells us to

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The NFL has investigated Elliott’s case since the spring of 2016. It’s not like there’s anything new out there that tipped the scales for this verdict.

What really happened here, is that the League kept biding their time while trying to make a case against him. Every time they found some sort of case or evidence against him, they couldn’t make it stick. Either the case was dropped or evidence didn’t materialize.

But as time passed on, people got restless. The media began asking questions about when a verdict will come down.

They began asking Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones about it and he chimed in. As this turned more into a media circus, then and only then, the NFL decided they needed to do something about it.

So, they just threw out there the six game suspension. Why? Well, here is what I believe was their train of logic for six games.

Six is more than the four that New England quarterback Tom Brady got last season. And certainly we can all agree that domestic violence is worse than the deflating of some footballs. Domestic violence is also worse than tampering with some evidence about deflating said footballs. Furthermore, we might even go as far to say that domestic violence is worse than deflating footballs and destroying the evidence, together. Six is bigger than four, so hand him six.

I really think the logic was as quickly-devised and simplistic as that. Why else would someone who still hasn’t been convicted of the charges against him face a suspension? Because the NFL wanted to, that’s why. But of course, there’s also one very odd and final message in this.

Our suspension is just a suggestion, so go ahead and appeal

This might be the part of the process I understand the least. Again, in the U.S. legal system, if the judge and jury tell you that you’re going to prison for five years, you’re going for five years. You might get that commuted to three, but that’s AFTER you’ve been in prison for three. It’s not the other way around.

But the NFL has actually set themselves up as wrong right from the get-go. The fact that a player can appeal his suspension is nothing new. The MLB does it, too but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. Why even hand out a verdict in the first place? This type of reaction is akin to a parent asking a child that just got in trouble, “Junior, what do you think Daddy should to about you stealing that cookie?” Of course the kid is going to ask for leniency.

It really comes down to common sense. If the League wants to clean their image and look better, they need to start talking to these guys about these kind of things before they happen. And when they do, wait until all evidence is presented and some kind of court case is made. But this “Minority Report” kind of game that they’re playing right now makes no sense and does nothing to help the situation.

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All this does is open the door for someone wanting to hurt a player or that player’s team to go out and make blanket false allegations. If they’re loud enough, vocal enough and persistent enough about these claims, then the NFL will listen. And as they always have, they’ll act with the “guilty until proven innocent” approach. And in the end, all that will do is hurt their own product on the field — just like in the case of this season’s Cowboys. Because now, their number one-marketed franchise will be without one of their biggest players to start the season. And that, my friends, doesn’t help the NFL at all.

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