NFL Players Sound off on the First Decade of Roger Goodell

Over the course of the last 56 years, only three commissioners have reigned over the National Football League. Pete Rozelle ruled well before and well after the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, serving 29 years in that office. His successor, Paul Tagliabue, spent 17 years as commish. And this summer, modern-day commissioner No. 3, Roger Goodell, is celebrating a decade as the head honcho. 

That’s right—it was on Aug. 8, 2006, when Goodell, then the league’s chief operating officer, was elected commissioner by way of a 23-8 ownership vote (with Al Davis of the Raiders abstaining) at a suburban Chicago hotel. 

Despite facing a wide variety of challenges in realms such as player behavior, discipline, player safety and collective bargaining, Goodell, 57, has helped the NFL become more lucrative than ever. The league’s 32 owners are his bosses, and he serves them well, which is why he earned an average of more than $20 million per year during his first nine years as commissioner, per ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell. 

And yet those challenges have worked to severely damage Goodell’s standing with those who actually play the game he oversees. 

A 2013 USA Today poll of 300 players found that 61 percent disapproved of the job Goodell had done, and that came before Goodell was heavily criticized for his approach to player discipline in light of high-profile domestic violence incidents involving stars Greg Hardy and Ray Rice, among others.

It also came before Goodell became embroiled in his third “gate.”

Watergate brought down Richard Nixon, but Roger Goodell has survived Spygate (2007-2008), Bountygate (2009-2012) and Deflategate (2015-present). 

All of that controversy, however, has clearly weakened his reputation in the eyes of the players, over 200 of whom Bleacher Report reached out to this summer in hopes of discussing Goodell. That wide net was cast deliberately, because most players aren’t interested in essentially talking football politics. 

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the current and former players B/R contacted politely declined, either directly or through representatives. In doing so, dozens virtually cited a phrase taught to all of us in kindergarten: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. 

Ultimately, 10 NFLers did open up about the commish. And believe it or not, some had nice things to say. Others did not. 

We gave Flozell Adams, Corey Graham, Jabari Greer, Clark Haggans, Adam Hayward, Chris Kluwe, Paris Lenon, Gerald McCoy, Sage Rosenfels and Jake Scott a blank canvas. This is the picture they painted. 

           

The Fall Guy

Sometimes you have to remind yourself that Goodell represents the league’s 32 teams, not its players. When you look at it that way, it’s easier to understand why so many owners continue to save face while Goodell comes under fire. 

“I think he has done a fantastic job at what his actual job is, which is to take attention away from the owners,” said Kluwe, the outspoken former punter who played for the Seahawks, Vikings and Raiders. “Goodell doesn’t really make decisions by himself, but he’s sort of the front man for the 32 owners.”

Scott, who served as an NFL Players Association player representative for the Tennessee Titans before, during and after the 2011 lockout, got the same impression during heated labor negotiations. 

“Roger’s job is to be the face of the league and kind of draw all of the attention—whether it’s good or bad—away from the owners,” said Scott, who enjoyed a nine-year NFL career as a guard in Indianapolis, Tennessee, Philadelphia and Detroit. “He’s the one whose face is on the TV all the time.”

The problem, it appears, is that Goodell does continue to possess absolute power in some areas. And in those cases—typically when it comes to player discipline—there’s a sense among some players that he has abused that power by failing to abide by what should be unambiguous conduct policies. 

“The commissioner should just execute,” said Haggans, a former linebacker who was suspended by Goodell after a DUI in 2012. “That’s all he needs to do. ‘It’s not on me. They made the laws; I’m just reporting the news.’ Stone-cold laws and the commissioner is just the messenger.”

The NFL’s key policies have recently become much more explicit than they used to be, but the rules and penalties haven’t always been straightforward, which is why we can’t simply defend Goodell by telling his critics not to shoot the messenger. 

       

Goodell the Disciplinarian

It appears there’s a consensus among current and former NFLers that Goodell plays the role of judge, jury and executioner while lacking consistency with his punishments, mainly because he has so much freedom within the disciplinary process. 

As one of his first major acts as commissioner, Goodell—who quickly established himself as a commish who’d be especially tough on crime—introduced a new personal conduct policy, which gave him free reign to punish players for off-field indiscretions in an attempt to protect the league’s image. The problem in the eyes of many is that Goodell hasn’t been particularly consistent or fair when handing down sentences. 

“The initial transition from Tagliabue to Goodell wasn’t an issue, but things really changed when he introduced the new conduct policy,” said Lenon, a former linebacker who started 128 games over 12 NFL seasons. “There’s definitely been an issue with consistency. And I think that’s a pretty unanimous feeling.”

What a lot of folks might not realize is Goodell and the league did establish a more concrete standard for player discipline a couple of years ago, but that was only introduced as a reaction to the commissioner’s biggest blunder. 

Critics of the initial Goodell policy scoffed the loudest in 2014, when Goodell suspended running back Ray Rice for only two games after Rice was charged with assaulting his wife, then-fiancee, Janay Palmer, despite the fact surveillance footage showed the veteran back dragging an unconscious Palmer out of an elevator in an Atlantic City casino. 

The punishment seemed insufficient, especially when compared to the season-long suspension Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon had received that same offseason for repeatedly testing positive for marijuana, or the five-game suspension handed to rookie Terrelle Pryor for signing autographs for compensation while in college. A policy Goodell introduced in order to protect the league’s image backfired, instead giving onlookers the impression that the NFL was more concerned about pot smoke and performance-enhancing drugs than domestic abuse. 

When public pressure reached a boiling point that summer, Goodell admitted he “didn’t get it right” and increased Rice’s suspension to six games under a completely revamped policy on domestic violence. And when a videotape emerged a couple of weeks later showing Rice striking Palmer in the elevator, Goodell insisted nobody at the league had seen said footage but still announced that Rice would be suspended indefinitely.

Rice and the NFLPA appealed, arguing he’d been subjected to double jeopardy. Later that fall, a neutral arbitrator overturned the indefinite suspension. 

“He fumbled on that one,” Greer said. “He did not carry justice through.”

What makes the Rice episode so frustrating and so damning for Goodell is that there are so many layers, all of which represent various missteps. The initial decision seemed ridiculous, the adjustment was probably out of line and the league’s claim that it never had access to the video of the assault remains dubious.  

“It never made sense to me,” said Rosenfels, who felt Goodell should have used common sense based on the fact there was footage of Rice dragging Palmer out of the elevator, as well as the reality that Rice reportedly acknowledged his mistake during his suspension hearing with the commissioner, according to ESPN.com’s Don Van Natta Jr. “But you’ve got a high-profile player who just won the Super Bowl.”

“Either you don’t know about it, or you don’t care to know about it,” the former journeyman backup quarterback added, referring to the tape. “Either way, we’ve got a problem.”

And the Rice case wasn’t just an isolated lapse in competence. After conducting her own study that same year, FiveThirtyEight’s Allison McCann concluded that “the NFL’s punishment of personal conduct violations has been inconsistent and on average less harsh than its punishment of drug offenses.”

The problem with the 2007 personal conduct policy was that it gave Goodell too much rope. While the policies pertaining to substance abuse and performance-enhancing drugs spelled out clear punishment guidelines, the conduct policy allowed Goodell the ability to make things up as he went along—at least until the new policy, which calls for a six-game ban for initial violations involving domestic violence or sexual assault, was introduced after the Rice scandal.

But the league’s collectively bargained policies are still far from perfect, and they still give Goodell license to go rogue. Players can and have been suspended without being convicted of crimes, and there continues to be no specific guidelines for infractions that don’t pertain specifically to assault and domestic violence.

“It should be black and white. You do this, this is what you get. Fines, suspensions, everything. No gray area,” Haggans said. “I’ve been suspended. I said, I’ll take it. And after that I was cool. It was over. But they look at players’ names, how popular they are, how much money they make.”

What’s more, to many players, the lengthy battle over Brady’s four-game Deflategate suspension has felt a little too personal. 

“Nobody cares about that anymore,” said Adams, a former Pro Bowl offensive lineman who spent 13 seasons with the Cowboys and Steelers. “It’s 2016, and that happened in 2014. Even I was 37 years old when that happened. Why’s he still punishing this guy? You convicted him, he appealed, it got overturned and should be done, and now months later you’re trying to get him again.

“Every once in a while I get together with the guys, and we talk about all of these things, and I can tell you that they feel the same way that I feel right now.”

And while pressure from the union forced Goodell to step aside during Rice’s appeal, the fact that Goodell continues to possess the ability to handle appeals regarding some of his own verdicts—as he did when Brady and the union appealed his initial Deflategate ruling last year—continues to frustrate players.

“Discipline is probably the big area where he is kind of failing to do his job properly,” Kluwe said. “Because ideally you want a disciplinary process where everyone knows what the rules are. They know if you break the rules, and then there’s a process of truly independent appeals so you can make your case again.

“Unfortunately, under Goodell, that hasn’t really existed,” Kluwe continued. “A lot of his disciplinary decisions have been made up on the fly—they’ve been reactive instead of proactive, …

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