This has been the worst 2 weeks for the NFL I have ever seen. Unbelievable. I won’t lie, I’m really enjoying watching the NFL finally get hit hard enough to stumble, and I hope at the end of all this mess Roger finds himself out of work. It’s nice to see the untouchable mega giant actually get slapped around a bit. Football and the NFL isn’t going anywhere, but taking it down a peg or two might be nice.

With the arrest of John Dwyer later yesterday I think this would be a good enough point to lay out some opinions and get mad at each other, so here are my thoughts on what’s gone down so far.

On Ray Rice:
I was against him from the start. For me, what sold me on his guilt was the way he carried his fiancee out of the elevator. He dragged her, let her head flop, and sort of kicked her legs out of the way of the door. It was not the actions of a man who got a lucky shot in during a squabble, it looked like the actions of a cold-hearted asshole. But I didn’t know what happened in the elevator, so I was willing to admit that maybe things went down as he said. I didn’t believe it, but I could see why people might give him the benefit of the doubt. When the second video dropped all I could think was “Wow, that was worse than I thought”. These days only idiots support Rice. The Rice situation has given me a lot of joy in some ways though, because I’ve never seen the NFL botch something so terribly. If Rice had been given a 6 game suspension from the start I think none of this PR nightmare would have happened. But they did, and from then on every subsequent suspension and punishment handed down from the league (like for Welker and Josh Gordon) was inevitably compared to Rice’s short suspension, even if the comparison wasn’t really fair because the crimes were unrelated. It kept the Ray Rice story in the news, so when that second video hit, hoo boy. Then we get reports they saw the video and lied, and now the NFL is hiding behind lawyers on that front. If Rice had been given a 6 game suspension, we would have had some homer Ravens fans calling foul at the start, but it would have died quickly enough and the second video dropping wouldn’t have been a big deal because everyone would have seen it and said “wow, maybe the NFL should have given him even more games off” instead of the outrage we got. Then these other cases wouldn’t have gotten so big, and the NFL could have quietly swept them under the rug.

The best part about this is that if the 2 game suspension was accurate for the rules and standards of the NFL, and Ray was given an accurate punishment for his crimes according to policy (even if that policy sucked), it makes the NFL banning him later an immoral move, because that is what’s called double jeopardy. You can’t punish someone further retroactively for a crime you already punished them for. The NFL will probably find some law loophole that says they can ban him for something lying about the attack, but that doesn’t change what the NFL did. I’ve never seen the NFL screw up this badly and it’s delightful.

On Adrian Peterson:
This is a weird situation. What Peterson did is child abuse, plain and simple. Just because he got whooped as a kid and turned out fine doesn’t make it alright. If you think hitting your child with a stick until he bleeds is just, then guess what, you didn’t “turn out fine”. I can understand a little swat or a spank, even if I wouldn’t do it myself (studies have shown how ineffective this is) but he made his child bleed. A 4 year old bled. Once you make your child bleed you can’t pretend it’s discipline. Once your child bleeds, that is goddamn child abuse (Bruises count, bruises are internal bleeding), and AP should be ashamed of himself. He did this to multiple kids, and this comes after he lost a child to child abuse just last year! Okay, so he doesn’t see this as abuse. All I hope for in AP is that after all this, he grows as a person and realizes that it is not okay to whip your small child with sticks until they bleed. It’s not okay. Science has shown just a few spankings cause mental issues down the road, society has moved on from physical discipline. Ignorance and your parents doing it does not make it okay. Parents are people too, they can be wrong. This is the year 2014. We aren’t barbarians anymore.

As for what to do with him, I really don’t know. I say keep him benched or deactivated. You can’t cut him, he’s facing charges not convicted yet. The Vikings have “deferred to the law” and basically said he can play. I don’t think this is fair, because it comes across as favoritism. If AP had been a nobody backup, he’d be cut and dumped quickly and efficiently. Because he’s important however, they are letting him play. I understand the Vikings want to keep him, but they can do so in ways that still punish the guy for his ignorance of modern parenting techniques.

On Johnathan Dwyer:
He’s a backup that isn’t that important. The Cards already deactivated him and may dump him altogether. He’s no AP. The exempt list that AP gets on is kind of bull.

Greg Hardy:
Not really sure what to make of this situation, nothing seems really clear at the moment yet. It seemed cut and dry but some folks who have followed it more seem to be mentioning things are less clear. Guess we need to let things play out here.

Ray McDonald:
The 49ers suspended a broadcaster for a Ray Rice comment. In the meantime Mr. McDonald continues to play. What the shit, 49ers?

On the NFL and Goodell:
I’m not a fan of Goodell at all. I feel like in the time he’s been in charge the NFL’s blatant attempts to grow and become even more money grubbing and disgusting have gotten worse. Part of me wonders if I feel that way because in his tenure I’ve matured from a dumb teen to functioning adult, but it seems like Goodell is pretty bad. I’d love to see him get ousted for this, because he’s a droopy blob faced man who isn’t fun to draw. With major sponsors making comments now, the money is finally in jeopardy, and if anything gets him ousted, it’s going to be the cash supply being threatened. But lets be real, Goodell is a stooge for the owners, and ousting him probably won’t change much. We’ll get a new guy who is also a stooge, because the owners are the real greedy people here, and we can’t do anything to oust them. But maybe we can get a slightly better stooge who cares less about fining people for the wrong colored socks and simplifying the rulebook so we don’t get a sea of yellow every weekend from here out.

The flags these past two weeks have been awful, and no matter what happens with the NFL, if they continue to put out this terrible product people are going to turn away.