NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell insists he did not lie to Jerry Jones about Ezekiel Elliott’s suspension.
Jones feels Goodell led him to believe the Commissioner would not suspend the Cowboys star running back. That’s why the Cowboys owner insisted, even a day before his Aug. 5 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, that Elliott was in the clear.
The league suspended Elliott on Aug. 11.
Goodell said Wednesday, with Jones standing a few feet away, that he never led Jones to believe Elliott would not face suspension.
“No,” Goodell said before repeating his answer.
Jones has stated publicly on several occasions that the league has a flawed internal disciplinary process borne out of an overreaction to the Ray Rice case. Jones repeated that Wednesday and hopes to change the Commissioner’s disciplinary power by tweaking the league’s constitution.
“We all know that we’ve had problematic aspects to our discipline, our investigation,” Jones said. “We all know that those have been there. What is a misnomer is that I’ve known Zeke the better part of two years. I’ve known Roger Goodell for 30. I’ve known the rest of the people in that room for 30 years. I know them a lot better than I do [Elliott], and we all know I wasn’t there. And you weren’t there. Nobody was there. Roger wasn’t there when that happened with Zeke.
“What I am about there, and I’m not going to say I didn’t rob the bank, but ironically that is very convenient to put up when the thing that I probably had the biggest issue was how we got to the point to where that kind of decision could be made. It’s how we got there and the circumstances were there that I want to talk about and we’re going to get to do that in that period of time when we’re talking about the commissioner’s responsibility and the constitution.”