Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Darius Slay is known for making flashy plays on the gridiron, and he made an equally flashy statement on Twitter.
Slay was reminiscing on the NFL’s suspension of Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley for betting on games, and then called out the NFL for its inconsistent suspension policies and personal conduct expectations for their players.
Just been on my mind lately… the NFL is suspending Ridley for the whole yr but dudes out here beating up females an getting suspended 6 games!!
— Darius Slay (@bigplay24slay) March 11, 2022
While Ridley obviously should not have been gambling on games, he does make a fair point.
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Within recent memory, the NFL has seemingly given slap-on-the-wrist type punishments to some former players who committed far worse offenses than Ridley. Some examples include:
- Ray Rice was suspended for 2 games and fined $58,000 after violently beating his fiancee in an elevator in 2014.
- Gregy Hardy was originally suspended for 10 games in 2014 after assaulting his girlfriend, but had his suspension reduced to four games upon appeal.
- Adrian Peterson was arrested on felony child abuse, but only missed four games and a $4.1 million dollar fine in the 2014 season.
- Richard Sherman had two misdemeanor charges on his record last summer, but paid a small amount of fines and has to attend one meeting to amend for his mistakes. The NFL took no action to discipline him any further.
So it appears the NFL has a disciplinary issue that they do not seem willing to address. Again, while it is certainly not acceptable to wager on games within the league, this discipline pattern does make you wonder why the NFL does not hand out harsher punishments to players that commit these truly gut-wrenching offenses.