NFL 2019 Preseason: Hard Knockin on Gruden's Door

[The Last Storm]

Heard them talking about this on the radio. Out of the three teams in NY (Giants,Jets and Bills) which team has the most wins at the end of the year. Even as a Giant fan I have to admit it’s not gonna be us. I’d say the Jets but after their O/line performance against the Bills im not sure. Don’t see any of them finishing better than .500 

[Kalbear]

With hot takes like the above I can't imagine why it's difficult to bring sexual assault cases to bear in the NFL

[Rockroi]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

With hot takes like the above I can't imagine why it's difficult to bring sexual assault cases to bear in the NFL

Wow, what a deep and insightful comment from you.  Please indulge me my crazy, irrational desire to say "Hmmm... I don't know if I believe this."  

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

Wow, what a deep and insightful comment from you.  Please indulge me my crazy, irrational desire to say "Hmmm... I don't know if I believe this."  

why would we? Sorry - why should we indulge your unqualified hyperbolic analysis of why women don't just walk away from abusive men? I mean, if you were genuinely curious why this happens so very often and is incredibly typical you could do some research and find out that what you described is entirely normal of sexual harassment/assault situations in the workplace - not to mention domestic violence situations and the like.

I mean, hell - you could have easily said the same thing about Ray Rice's wife...until we saw the video of him beating the shit out of her. You could say this about every single person who came out against Weinstein. You could say the same thing about the girls coming out against Epstein. You could say the same thing about the women who came out against Cosby. 

Put on your lawyer's hat and look at it the other way. What motive does she have to lie here? Is it likely going to help her career working as a personal trainer to athletes to lie about them potentially sexually assaulting her? Is this publicity going to help her in her personal life or public life right now? I don't know that she's telling the truth, mind you, but what seems more likely - someone with major stability and personal control issues sexually assaults a woman, or someone who is going to get basically nothing from it comes out with a lie designed to besmirch the already shitty reputation of a star wide receiver? 

[Kalbear]

Also, y'all can read the complaint in its full. It should be fairly easy to disprove or discredit, given that there are mentions of multiple people contacted about certain things contemporaneously, there are a large set of text and email messages about behaviors, and there are a fair amount of other details that should be easily corroborated. Things like whether or not he contacted her for training, if she contacted her mom after he jacked off on her while they were watching christian broadcast shows, if she lost the weight she said she did at the time she did - all of these should be pretty easy to find. 

I also didn't know that he was also accused of physically assaulting the mother of one of his kids. 

[The Mother of The Others]

Is it kind of the new hail mary play in society?    You really don't like the Kavenaugh appointment so you find a befuddled person and start her down the path of going in front of congress to say she was raped by someone and Kavenaugh is also someone.    Or in other cases like this one, you work closely with a team organization, you become loyal to that team after helping them to stay in shape and win, so the team's success becomes tied up with your self definition and then this jerk comes along, dicks with you, dicks the organization over, gets away with it all gloriously, you become personally offended and feel violated on a deep level, but also on a fan level, so you react like a member of the raider's endzone cheering section might react, and you say Antonio violated you, which is true enough, but you say he did it in a different way, to see if you can pull off the hail mary and negate his big touchdown dance and rain on the Patriot's parade   .......or..... he is a nut as advertised, and he did rape you, and the whole thing was so odd and out of nowhere and clearly the reveal of a crazy person in your midst , that one doesn't have any of the normal responses because the scenario was so abnormal, and the accusations have come out now because up until now Antonio was the new god of the training facility whom everyone was walking on eggshells to make happy and the weight of that was too much to shout out against.   

We really need a Tom Cruise pre-crime brain looking machine on this stuff to play back Antonio's memory to see the guilt or innocence in a way that skips past the he said / she said phase.   Let's push for science to develop precogs to help us with these cases.   in addition to all the green energy save the planet stuff, We need to save ourselves from cases that erode public trust in victims' stories.

[Quijote Light]

So you imply that there’s something mentally wrong with Christine Blasey Ford and that she’s an opportunistic liar in one sentence. Seems like par for the course. You’re disgusting. 

@Rockroi Whether or not you intended it, your post comes across as rape apologism and victim blaming. You shouldn’t be surprised if it’s responded to as Kal did.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

What did I just read?

[Rockroi]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

why would we? Sorry - why should we indulge your unqualified hyperbolic analysis of why women don't just walk away from abusive men? I mean, if you were genuinely curious why this happens so very often and is incredibly typical you could do some research and find out that what you described is entirely normal of sexual harassment/assault situations in the workplace - not to mention domestic violence situations and the like.

I mean, hell - you could have easily said the same thing about Ray Rice's wife...until we saw the video of him beating the shit out of her. You could say this about every single person who came out against Weinstein. You could say the same thing about the girls coming out against Epstein. You could say the same thing about the women who came out against Cosby. 

Put on your lawyer's hat and look at it the other way. What motive does she have to lie here? Is it likely going to help her career working as a personal trainer to athletes to lie about them potentially sexually assaulting her? Is this publicity going to help her in her personal life or public life right now? I don't know that she's telling the truth, mind you, but what seems more likely - someone with major stability and personal control issues sexually assaults a woman, or someone who is going to get basically nothing from it comes out with a lie designed to besmirch the already shitty reputation of a star wide receiver? 

Its hardly hyperbolic. 

Before I continue I just want to point out,m again, that IRL I'm a divorce attorney and I have been around the block a time or two.  I have seen a lot of cases where a woman accuses a man of doing something horrible and I have thought, "Jesus, this guy would NEVER do something like that" and then indulge in all the usual excuses ("He seems normal" and "Has a steady job" and "She may just be trying to get back at him") only to find out, as the case moves on, that, no no - this guy is a fucking monster. 

And I have been in the case where the woman claims something horrible happened and the evidence just isn't there and in fact, the evidence piles up the other way. And you are left with the sneaking suspicion that the accuser was trying to gain an unfair advantage in litigation or monetarily.  That happens.  I have even been on the giving end of that; when it becomes clear to me that my own client is lying.  (and that fucking sucks).  

I have done domestic violence cases where the salt-of-the-earth guy has been abusing his G/F for years; where the legal secretary was beating the shit out of the retired Marine; where the accusations were made at the hight of the divorce only to be shown to be a pathetic attempt to win favor at the negotiating table.  

This cases could be, well, anything.

And yes I could say the same thing about Ray Rice... wait, no I couldn't because she came forward immediately.  I would say the same thing about Weinstein except for the fact that 1) EVERYONE ALREADY KNEW ABOUT WEINSTEIN; people were hyper-aware of him and 2) when the story broke the first thing people said was "No shit."  Cosby is a major issue b/c when it first broke I DID say "Wait, let's hold off before we..." And then the next day the # of accusers multiple to like 40.  

If stuff like that happens here, believe me, I'll be less skeptical.  

But OTOH... its an accusation with nothing more.  Even the text messages you identify are not even evidence - he ejaculated on her.  That proves nothing when they were in a relationship.  

One more thing- on my lawyer hat- why would she lie.  Monetary gain is a major reason for some of these things and it happens. AB now claims that she wanted to have a business with him and he passed so revenge is there as well.  

Look,  I am always slow to jump on the accusation bandwagon.  Again, being a former criminal defense attorney, it does that to you.  I have seen too much to just be "#BelieveAllWomen" and do not get me wrong I am aware of my own bias here- a guy I want to see football is accused of something terrible right before he can football.  But the best way to ruin somebody's reputation is to call them a rapist.  Even if that person's reputation is already terrible.  That's how horrible the accusation is.  And sometimes it's totally warranted - Cosby, Weinstein, etc.  And sometimes it's not (Duke LaCross, Rolling Stone-University of Virginia; the McMartin and Fells' Acre Cases - it's not.  

One thing I agree with you on is that, right now, we don't know anything.  Yes, I do say "Bullshit" because it sounds like it.  But I am not married to that.  I am more than willing to listen to counter-vailing information.

But I do not think this guy's career should be over b/c of an accusation.  Evidence would be nice.  Or "too much to ask for."  

[Rockroi]

5 minutes ago, Quijote Light said:

So you imply that there’s something mentally wrong with Christine Blasey Ford and that she’s an opportunistic liar in one sentence. Seems like par for the course. You’re disgusting. 

@Rockroi Whether or not you intended it, your post comes across as rape apologism and victim blaming. You shouldn’t be surprised if it’s responded to as Kal did.  

I'm not surprised.  This is what happens when somebody has the temerity to question the narrative.  

ETA: and the narrative here is "All women are telling the truth about rape and sexual assault."

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

Its hardly hyperbolic. 

When you take comments out of context, elide facts to fit your narrative, and use a lot of OMG WHY things - it's hyperbolic. 

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

This cases could be, well, anything.

Did you bother reading the complaint?

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

If stuff like that happens here, believe me, I'll be less skeptical.  

You should have been less skeptical already. If you didn't change after Cosby, you aren't going to change after this. 

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

But OTOH... its an accusation with nothing more.  Even the text messages you identify are not even evidence - he ejaculated on her.  That proves nothing when they were in a relationship.  

They were not in a relationship. She was in a relationship with another person on a long-term basis - apparently she is STILL in that relationship. She stated that she never was in any relationship other than a business partnership with AB. 

Did you read the complaint?

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

One more thing- on my lawyer hat- why would she lie.  Monetary gain is a major reason for some of these things and it happens. AB now claims that she wanted to have a business with him and he passed so revenge is there as well.  

Fair enough. I'll note that civil rape trials often happen because the burder of proof (especially of a jury) is absurdly high for rape or sexual assault cases, meaning that even with a fair amount of corroborating evidence they often fail. 

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

Look,  I am always slow to jump on the accusation bandwagon.  Again, being a former criminal defense attorney, it does that to you.  I have seen too much to just be "#BelieveAllWomen" and do not get me wrong I am aware of my own bias here- a guy I want to see football is accused of something terrible right before he can football.  But the best way to ruin somebody's reputation is to call them a rapist. 

The best way to ruin someone's reputation is to call them a child abuser. Ben's reputation hasn't changed all that much. Neither has Kobe's. Hell, people STILL are saying that R Kelly is fine. The notion that rape accusations destroy someone's lives is, well, rape apology. You know what's a better way to ruin someone's life than accusing them of rape? Having them be raped. 

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

 

One thing I agree with you on is that, right now, we don't know anything.  Yes, I do say "Bullshit" because it sounds like it.  But I am not married to that.  I am more than willing to listen to counter-vailing information. 

Did you read the complaint?

5 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

But I do not think this guy's career should be over b/c of an accusation.  Evidence would be nice.  Or "too much to ask for."  

I don't think his career is ruined. He's being suspended with pay. So he gets paid 15 million for doing nothing at all. This is precisely the kind of hyperbolic comment I was talking about. When you say that someone's life is ruined because he's being suspended with pay, you give ammo to the kind of people who say that no one should come forward - because apparently simply making a credible accusation is now ruining someone's life. 

[Bronn Stone]

12 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

ETA: and the narrative here is "All women are telling the truth about rape and sexual assault."

Congratulations Counselor Strawman.  You have COMPLETELY defeated the argument that absolutely nobody made.

[Rockroi]

 

 

 

 

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Did you bother reading the complaint?

You said this several times (and I did).  But to reiterate- a Complaint is an accusation; nothing more.  It's not evidence.  It's simply an accusation.  

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

 You said this several times (and I did)

Let's go to the tape, shall we?

• You said that the plaintiff and AB were in a relationship. In the complaint, this is established as incorrect. 

  Quote

  30. Ms. Taylor never dated or had an interest in any romantic relationship with Brown. Their relationship, as far as Ms. Taylor believed and behaved, was that of a ‘brother-sister’ type.

   

• You expressed confusion as to this part:

  Quote

  WHAT THE FUCK!?!??  Now, the statement here that requires info is the "without her knowledge."  Did this guy jerk off on her wand she didn't know?  How did she not know?  Was she asleep?  Did he Rufee her?  Or did she know?  This is fucking gross.  And - just to point out - sexual contact between consenting adults can be really gross.  Also what does "position himself behind her" mean in this context?  Why is that even there?  Now, for the record, I'm a lawyer so I write stuff like this all the time and this fucking sentence appears fucking crazy.

  This appears no where in the complaint. What does appear is the following:

  Quote

  35. In late June 2017, however, during another training visit, Brown and Ms. Taylor were watching a church service on Ms. Taylor’s iPad in Brown’s home in Miami, Florida. As they Case 0:19-cv-62258-XXXX Document 1 Entered on FLSD Docket 09/10/2019 Page 5 of 15 6 had during their college Christian fellowship days, they often read scriptures, prayed or watched services together during training visits. On this occasion, Brown was behind Ms. Taylor as they watched the service on her tablet. Unbeknownst to Ms. Taylor, while she was focused on the religious video, Brown began masturbating behind her. Before she knew it or understood what was happening, Brown ejaculated on her.  

  It is odd that you would have questions about these things when they are very clearly spelled out in the complaint - if you had read the complaint.

 

[Lord Dracarys]

The in a relationship or not thing is something that AB's legal team has contested in their own statement by saying they were in a sexual relationship. Along with the complaint there are apparently a bunch of messages as well that have been posted onto social media pertaining to this incident and others (that are purportedly very graphic, I did not read them because I'm at work). I think CBSSports had a link up on their story if anybody is interested at looking at supporting material for the complaint. Personally since this is civil case I'm picturing it ending relatively quietly with a settlement, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the real consequences of said accusation. Not sure what that would mean for NFL punishment.

Has AB officially been suspended then? I can't seem to find that through normal sports news channels I follow.

 

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, Lord Dracarys said:

Has AB officially been suspended then? I can't seem to find that through normal sports news channels I follow.

 

No, he hasn't. He is currently practicing with the 1s. There were reports that the NFL was considering suspending him with pay, but that hasn't happened yet. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, he hasn't. He is currently practicing with the 1s. There were reports that the NFL was considering suspending him with pay, but that hasn't happened yet. 

I think they're waiting to speak with the accuser next week. AB probably plays this week then goes on the exempt list next week.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Before this back and forth gets unnecessarily heated, it's worth noting that this is a perfect example of difficult these situations can be to mediate. Both sides have credible cases to be made. Mrs. Taylor's list of events lines up fairly neatly with what you hear in a lot of cases like this. There was abuse, an apology followed by an escalation of abuse. People don't always come forward immediately after this type of series of events for myriad reasons, so there shouldn't be any judgment of the timing of her accusation. It's entirely plausible that seeing AB getting constant coverage triggered her, leading her to come forward. Personally I'd like to see when she began working with her legal team. That could be quite revealing. From AB's perspective, it's totally plausible that he either didn't rape her or didn't feel like what he did was rape. This gets complicated by the fact that he's very clearly displaying signs of having bipolar disorder. But that said, it's not unreasonable for him to think he's being wrongly accused and that this is a shakedown for money. Ignore the reports that she's suing him for $75,000. That number is just required to meet a legal standard. She will likely ask for millions, and when you consider their previously failed business attempts, that can make people feel that this is shady.

Complicating all of this is the dynamic of the star athlete and power dynamics with regards to rape. AB is probably used to having women throw themselves at him, given that he is a rich, handsome pro athlete. Being rejected by this woman could trigger him into raping her, which again gets complicated by his mental state of mind. That's probably going to be Mrs' Taylor's best argument, because at the end of the day only those two know what really happened. And because of that, nothing is really gained by getting into arguments about things you can't really know the answer to at this point in time. Let the process play itself out and the chips will fall where they may.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The best way to ruin someone's reputation is to call them a child abuser. Ben's reputation hasn't changed all that much. Neither has Kobe's. Hell, people STILL are saying that R Kelly is fine. The notion that rape accusations destroy someone's lives is, well, rape apology. You know what's a better way to ruin someone's life than accusing them of rape? Having them be raped. 

*cough* Ronaldo *cough* 

[DanteGabriel]

Rock, in the Ray Rice case, she did not "come forward immediately." We found out about it because of the footage of him dragging her out of the elevator unconscious. She tried to protect her abuser. It wasn't until we actually saw the punch on the inside-elevator camera (except for Roger Goodell, apparently, who never saw the footage and was exonerated of having seen the footage by one Robert Mueller) that shit started to happen to Rice.

I'm a little surprised and disappointed that you went with the "why'd she wait so long" and "why was she friendly to him after" arguments. Even one of the morning guys on Sports Hub (I can never tell Toucher and Rich apart) was more aware of the flaws in those arguments and was careful to say they aren't evidence against her.

I would like to see a real investigation of the accusations. I don't feel particularly protective of Antonio Brown's career. Would be fine with me if he never plays a down for the Patriots or for anyone else.

[Kalbear]

What I find very weird is that Brown contended that they had a consensual relationship...in 2018.

Quote

However, in 2018, the accuser resurfaced and offered to travel to Pennsylvania and South Florida to train Mr. Brown for the upcoming season. Thereafter, the accuser engaged Mr. Brown in a consensual personal relationship. Any sexual interaction with Mr. Brown was entirely consensual.

But him cumming on her back happened the previous year. 

Between that and the text messages, that implies that the relationship was not consensual prior to that and that he did, indeed, sexually assault her then. He probably needs a better legal team.