When Cris Carter declared Monday that he’d be shocked if an Ezekiel Elliott suspension weren’t announced within 48 hours, I agreed. When Commissioner Roger Goodell threw water on the claim at a Giants fan forum on Monday (when will he be speaking at that Patriots fan forum?), I reconsidered.
Not because Carter was wrong, but because it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the league alter its planned implementation of the decision based on the fact that someone leaked to Carter that it was coming.
In order to assess the ultimate accuracy of Carter’s “I’m not reporting, I’m just reporting” claims, the real questions will be: (1) whether Elliott is suspended; (2) whether the evidence demonstrates that he committed domestic violence; and (3) whether the evidence shows that Elliott destroyed or disposed of evidence. Those three points are far more important than the timing of when the suspension comes, and if those three things don’t come to fruition it will mean either that Carter was flat wrong, or that the leak was a trial balloon that went down faster than a model airplane in a hurricane.