Why Ray Rice will never play in the NFL again

If NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t get it right before when it came to the Ray Rice case then he made up for it on Monday, as did the Baltimore Ravens (for the record, that will be all of the credit they get in this column.)

And in return, Ray Rice will slowly begin to remember the career he threw away.

The Ravens terminated the contract of running back Ray Rice after his domestic violence charge took another turn.  TMZ Sports released the security video of what happened in the elevator that night in Atlantic City.

(Caution, the video below is fairly graphic.)

The Baltimore Ravens weren’t the only ones to take action on Monday, Goodell made up for his ridiculous two-game suspension by suspending the running back indefinitely, meaning that he won’t be able to sign with any other team this season and beyond.

Goodell created harsher penalties for players who get involved in domestic violence cases after fans, players and just about everyone in between fired back at Rice’s original two-game suspension.

“I didn’t get it right,” Goodell said in a letter to the 32 NFL owners in August.  “Simply put, we have to do better, and we will.”

The new policy states that any NFL employee, including non-players, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

However, here’s some food for thought: had the Ravens not released Ray Rice and Goodell still suspended him for the year, the Ravens would’ve owed him $4 million this season and $3 million in each of the next two seasons.  His salary-cap number lowered from $8.75 million to $4.75 million and next season he would’ve still been on the cap for $9.5 million of dead money.

Now the Ravens don’t owe him a dime.

Rice was originally charged with felony aggravated assault in the case, however he was accepted into a pretrial intervention program in May that allowed him to avoid jail time and could’ve led to the charge being purged from his record.

But now he’s done with football. Or, at least football’s done with him.

It doesn’t matter that Rice was one of the more productive backs in the NFL, running for 6,180 yards with 37 touchdowns in his career and receiving another 3,034 yards with six touchdowns in six seasons, and it doesn’t matter that he was a key part of the Ravens Super Bowl XLVII championship team. It also doesn’t matter (nor did it ever) that the Ravens and Ray Rice had his wife apologize for what happened in their press conference during the offseason.

What matters now is what happened and how the NFL and it’s players will not stand for domestic violence (even though it still remains a fairly common thing in pro sports.

If Goodell really wants to make a statement, he should ban Ray Rice for life, sort of like what baseball did with Pete Rose, bt for very, very different reasons.

The NFL’s take on Rice’s incident may be late, but it’s still better late than never.  Rice now has the time to reflect on what he’s done and the career he threw away.  Nobody’s going to want Ray Rice on their team, he’s lost all of the respect of the players in the league, meaning that he won’t be a fit no matter where he goes.

And for those thinking he may go to Canada, forget it.  They’ve heard about and seen the video by now too as well.

Moral of the story: remember that you’re always being watched.