NFL, players union rip each other’s integrity
Elliott’s defence centres on undermining alleged victim’s character
POSTMEDIA NETWORK occasions in a five-day span in July 2016, against his then girlfriend, Tiffany Thompson.
This, even though no criminal charges were filed against Elliott in this case, nor in three cases since early last year of alleged violence or improper sexual touching that have come to light.
Elliott denies wrongdoing in the July 2016 case, which is the only one that landed him a suspension. announced it is appealing the suspension, on Elliott’s behalf.
On Wednesday the NFL said commissioner Roger Goodell has appointed Harold Henderson to hear the appeal, to be held Tuesday, Aug. 29, according to NFL Network. Henderson has served as one of Goodell’s appealshearing designees since 2008. Two years ago Henderson reduced the 10-game suspension of Cowboys pass rusher Greg Hardy to four games.
It has become clear that Elliott and the NFLPA, as a principal prong of their defence, are indeed questioning the character and credibility of Thompson. Elliott’s lawyers on Friday promised that during “the upcoming weeks and through the appeal, a slew of additional credible and (opposing ) evidence will come to light.”
Since Friday, the following has come to light:
• Elliott’s claimed “the NFL’s own experts concluded” that many of Thompson’s self-photographed injuries “predated the week in question and likely occurred during a period of time when Mr. Elliott was not in contact with the accuser,” and furthermore that even NFL investigators found Thompson had lied when she additionally claimed that Elliott dragged her out of a car during the week in question.
• On Monday, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported that last September Elliott filed an incident report with police in Frisco, the Dallas suburb where the Cowboys franchise is based. Elliott called police to his house and told them he had received at least 50 phone calls from Thompson between 2:39 and 10 a.m. that day, and a few times tried to persuade her to stop. NFL Network said police no longer are investigating.
morning, Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports broke the news that NFL investigators’ 160-page report on Elliott includes the fact that Thompson last year discussed with a friend the idea of perhaps trying to blackmail Elliott with the threat of selling sex tapes she had recorded of herself with the Cowboys star.
The NFL on Wednesday did not deny any of these accusations against Thompson.
Even if all are true, it sure doesn’t mean Elliott did not rough her up on three separate days in mid-July of last year, which the NFL’s yearlong investigation found left the young woman with injuries to her arms, neck, shoulders, wrist, hands, face, knee and hips.
From a Deflategate déjà vu standpoint, however, the fact the NFL — in informing Elliott by letter on Friday and quickly leaking it to the press, and also in its own official news release — chose to leave it to the Elliott camp to divulge things that undermine Thompson’s character, rather than acknowledge any of it itself, probably means the communications the NFL issued on Friday had inched through their lawyervetting assembly line for weeks.
Why? Perhaps for the purpose of girding for another ugly court battle against the union and a suspended star player.
And hey, the NFL’s thinking might have gone, once the Elliott camp inevitably releases all the bad stuff on Thompson, we can rip them for it publicly. Some feud, eh? One person with a heavy iron in this fire, who has a Texas-sized ego but who has shockingly kept mum since Friday, is Cowboys owner/ GM Jerry Jones.
“I don’t have anything to say about any of the appeal or anything about that issue today,” Jones said Tuesday to NFL Network’s James Palmer. “But, certainly I’ll be visiting with you guys about it in the future. But right now today is just not the time for me to talk about it.”
The NFL and NFLPA couldn’t see that high a road on Wednesday with a telescope.