One of the more common comments I’ve seen in response to the Ezekiel Elliott suspension and his camp’s response to it is that if Elliott is innocent he should have been publicly saying so for the past year. It’s easy to say that now, but Elliott’s prior silence was strategic.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Elliott and his representatives opted to participate in the process and to trust that it would lead to his exoneration. The league, for whatever reason, required more than a full year to resolve the situation.
When it began, Elliott didn’t know it would take that long. While it lasted, Elliott gained nothing by sharing publicly or leaking privately chapter-and-verse details about his defense.
Now that he has been suspended and now that the battle has been joined with his appeal, that will all change. And it will get ugly and nasty.
Elliott, despite being cleared by the authorities in Columbus, has been branded a domestic abuser under a low standard of proof through an in-house, private justice system founded on, and fueled by, public relations concerns. This isn’t about whether he did or didn’t do it; it’s about what would happen to Big Shield if it does nothing to Elliott and enough members of the court of public opinion conclude that the league got it wrong.
Elliott will now defend himself in this court which may not quite be kangaroo but it’s definitely some sort of marsupial, with the next step being whether Roger Goodell will appoint himself to decide whether the decision he already made was correct. The right move would be to delegate the appeal to a truly independent arbitrator.