When they decided to keep kicker Josh Brown after allegations of domestic violence, Giants owner John Mara said the team “did do some due diligence” on the case.
But last night’s news that Brown admitted to years of physical and emotional abuse of his then-wife was news to them too.
According to Ralph Vacchiano of SNY, a team spokesman said “the team was unaware of the information and documents in the Josh Brown case released to the press last night.”
Brown is on the field and practicing today, in advance of the team’s trip to London. He hasn’t talked to reporters today, and coach Ben McAdoo was not scheduled to talk until they arrived in England tomorrow. He does have a scheduled radio appearance later this afternoon.
When the first reports of abuse emerged in August, Mara said the team was “comfortable with the decision” to re-sign the free agent kicker after they were aware of his past.
“I’m not going to get into whether they were valid or invalid. We did do some due diligence on this. We had a number of conversations with a number of different people,” Mara said then. “We had a lot of facts and circumstances that were presented to us. We looked at all of those things. This is an organization that always tries to do the right thing. I don’t know if we always get it done, but we try.
“We did our homework here. We got as many of the facts and circumstances in front of us as we could, and we made the determination.”
The NFL was also unaware after their investigation, so the Giants don’t have to feel alone. Brown was suspended one game by the league, far less than the six-game “baseline” for domestic violence suspensions.