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Former Nebraska Football Kicker Deserves The ‘Ray Rice Treatment’

By Oliver Vandervoort

Aug 27, 2016; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants kicker Josh Brown (3) before the preseason game against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. The Giants won, 21-20. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
Aug 27, 2016; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants kicker Josh Brown (3) before the preseason game against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. The Giants won, 21-20. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports /
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Former Nebraska football kicker Josh Brown admitted to verbally and physically abusing his wife.

Despite this admission, the kicker was resigned by the New York Giants before the 2016 season and was only suspended for one game. By and large, it turns out the NFL would rather pretend they never even heard about this situation.

You don’t hear talk about Brown have beat his wife during the games, you don’t hear talk about Roger Goodell reexamining the punishment doled out in order to make it more serious. In fact, you don’t hear any of the outcry that accompanied the video of Ray Rice punching and knocking out his then-fiance in a hotel elevator.

When Rice was suspended for a ridiculously small number of games, domestic violence advocates rightfully went ballistic, attacking the NFL as a place where that kind of thing was acceptable. Goodell, in turn increased the suspension and when Rice was eligible to play again, the Baltimore Ravens cut him loose.

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This isn’t to say that anything that happened to Rice was unfair. It is a little odd to see the former Nebraska football star kicker in Brown, not have any of that happen to him. By Brown’s own accounts, it appears his abuse was much worse than what we saw from Rice.

As CBS Sports points out, Brown told the Giants that he had abused his wife before they resigned him to a new contract in the offseason. The team’s owner, John Mara has admitted knowing about the incident since last year’s Pro Bowl.

Josh Brown is a very good kicker, but that behavior alone has to have you scratching your head. Ray Rice was arguably quite a bit more valuable to the Ravens, as a running back than Brown is to the Giants as their kicker.

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Rices’ abuse case started just before the season kicked off, while Browns took place during the offseason. In my estimation, the New York Giants should have run screaming from the conference room where these contract negotiations took place. The fact that they didn’t is just one indication about how, in the words of Ravens wide receiver Steve Smith, “the system is broken.”

He added that the “NFL needs to stop acting like they care and start Showing people they mean what they Say!!!” Once again, the NFL seems to have several different standards. It’s hard to know which one they’re following this time around.

According to the former Nebraska football player’s wife, there have been more than 20 different instances of violence over the past several years. 20. Ray Rice isn’t in the league anymore because of one incident captured on camera.

Josh Brown played several games after serving a one game suspension, despite being alleged to have committed abuse 20 times, and admitting he abused her at least once. He also kept a journal, one that is the stuff of domestic abuse counselors’ nightmares.

In one journal entry, Brown admitted, “I viewed myself as God basically and she was my slave. I carried an overwhelming sense of entitlement because I put money higher than God and I used it as a power tool.” Brown also admitted he had been abusing women since the age of seven.

While the NFL didn’t know everything to this story when it first suspended him, it knew enough to actually move his wife and their children to an undisclosed location. Keep that in mind. The league thought the situation was bad enough that they were helping to hide Brown’s wife and child, but not bad enough to give him more than a one game suspension.

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Since this issue has popped back up, Brown is being left behind as the Giants head to London to play this weekend’s game. If the league and the team want to start to try and fix yet another mistake that has to do with domestic violence, they’ll have the former Nebraska football kicker sit home for the rest of the season and beyond.

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