In a story published Wednesday, Ravens G.M. Ozzie Newsome said he believed Ray Rice was truthful to him in his account of the February incident in which the now-former Ravens tailback struck his fiancee.
Asked if the version of events Rice told him matched the reality of the video released by TMZ, Newsome told the Baltimore Sun he believed Rice had accurately described the altercation to both Newsome and head coach John Harbaugh.
“Ray had given a story to John [Harbaugh] and I,” Newsome said, according to the Sun. “And what we saw on the video was what Ray said. Ray didn’t lie to me. He didn’t lie to me.”
However, in a response to the same question from the Sun, Ravens president Dick Cass indicated the incident, as captured on video, “just looks very different than what we understood the facts to be.”
Said Cass: “There’s a big difference between reading a report that says he knocked her unconscious or being told that someone had slapped someone and that she had hit her head. That is one version of the facts. That’s what we understood to be the case. When you see the video, it just looks very different than what we understood the facts to be.”
The Ravens released Rice on Monday, hours after the video showing him striking Janay Palmer was posted by TMZ.