New England’s new era of good football feeling continues Sunday night with a home playoff game, a rising young quarterback, and a devoted, delighted fan base ready to fill the stands for the former and empty their lungs for the latter.
After two consecutive four-win seasons, first-year coach and franchise favorite Mike Vrabel has conducted a football symphony in Foxborough, a 14-3 regular-season record and the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs undoubtedly casting the Patriots as one of the best stories of this NFL season.
And yet I can’t seem to shake the sour note, that feeling of dread that lurks around the corner of NFL fandom, a dark cloud that is particularly menacing for women. It was exposed again just before New Year’s, when Patriots starters Stefon Diggs and Christian Barmore landed in the headlines for off-the-field issues involving charges of violence against women. Neither has been officially charged and both, as always, deserve their presumption of innocence until proven otherwise.
But none of that precludes us from being disappointed, disgusted, or disenchanted by a system that continually reminds us that its primary objective remains protecting the almighty NFL shield above all else. Despite these incidents dating to Dec. 2, in Diggs’s case, or Aug. 8, in Barmore’s case, they only came to light last week — with neither seeming to raise any serious alarm bells in Foxborough.
Both players were on the field for Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Dolphins, with Diggs even reaching some lucrative performance bonuses in the win, and both seem on track to play in the playoff opener against the Chargers. The ability to ignore distraction is such an admirable quality when it comes to performing on the field but takes on a much darker tone when it’s utilized to block out distractions off the field. (Vrabel wouldn’t even acknowledge being disappointed in the accusations.)
Neither the Patriots nor the league office chose any obvious disciplinary action, despite both having the leeway to do it and a history of words that would justify it. Going back to the awful Ray Rice incident in 2014, when it took shocking video of his elevator assault on his then-fiancée to push his suspension beyond a laughable two games, the NFL promised us it had upped its standards for any suggestion of domestic violence. It wrote a new, lengthy, and detailed personal conduct policy with a first sentence that simply reminded players “it is a privilege to be part of the National Football League.”
This is what the policy says under the section Expectations and Standards of Conduct:
“It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime in a court of law. We are all held to a higher standard and must conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful. Players convicted of a crime or subject to a disposition of a criminal proceeding (as defined in this Policy) are subject to discipline. But even if the conduct does not result in a criminal conviction, players found to have engaged in prohibited conduct will be subject to discipline. Prohibited conduct includes but is not limited to the following: Actual or threatened physical violence against another person, including dating violence, domestic violence, child abuse, and other forms of family violence.”
That’s why the commissioner’s exempt list was created, to allow the league and teams to sideline a player (while paying him) as an investigation played out. Ultimate innocent verdicts may make that seem harsh — remember, Jabrill Peppers was cleared after missing seven games last season — but with the league making it clear even the appearance of impropriety is punishable, and with a cocaine possession charge also among the details of the Peppers incident, it now all seems pretty reasonable.
And let’s not forget when Kraft Group president Jonathan Kraft said this in a 2016 radio interview about domestic violence accusations in his locker room: “At the Patriots, we have taken it seriously for the 24 years our family has owned the team and it’s something, for us, in which there literally is no gray area … It’s something that’s totally unacceptable and it’s not something we’re ever going to tolerate here at the New England Patriots.”
Honestly, I’m not sure I’d even feel better if the two players had been benched for the Dolphins game or the upcoming playoff game. The sad truth is that I just wish it had never happened at all. Of course that’s true of all levels of society, not just professional locker rooms. But with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell always willing to prop his league up on a pedestal for the rest of us to admire — “At our best, the NFL sets an example that makes a positive difference,” he said at that 2014 post-Rice press conference — and the Patriots insisting there “is no gray area,” they once again failed to live up to those words.
I wrote this in another column in 2018 and, sadly, it remains true: The league still doesn’t know what to do about incidents like this other than talk a good game. The zero-tolerance policy rewritten in the Rice aftermath was supposed to include an initial six-game suspension for any offender, but that rarely happens. Talking strong but acting weak ultimately serves only to weaken.
This time around, the responses again feel weak.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.