He didn’t interview well. He was arrogant in meetings with draft evaluators. Draft process was disrespected because we do not disrespect the draft process because the draft process is non-disrespectful and any disrespect of it is full of rampant disrespect.
That’s one part of the draft process.
But there’s another. There’s a part of the process where teams will get upset over behavior in a meeting room but tolerate alleged terrible behavior outside of it. This draft process also produced the Ravens selecting Marshall pass rusher Mike Green, who has been accused of sexual assault.
Green has vehemently denied the accusations against him, and we don’t know if they’re true or not. They were enough for some teams, according to Sports Illustrated, to remove Green from their draft boards.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Green said. “There’s accusations out there. I’ve never been questioned. I’ve never been asked. Nobody ever asked me a question about what happened before I departed from Virginia. It was just accusations that caused me to leave.”
This aspect of the vaunted draft process shines a light on the NFL’s hypocrisy. Punish a player for not saying the right things in a pre-draft meeting with coaches and team executives. Reward a player for being accused of terrible acts.
This is an old NFL one-two dance. This has been the case since professional football was invented, but this moment is particularly exemplary because of what happened to Sanders.
Could Sanders have handled things better? Sure. He’s basically admitted as such.
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He fell like a rock for his “crime.” Green got a gorgeous parachute landing into one of the best franchises in the NFL.
There are so many reasons why the Ravens selecting him is problematic. This is a team that still has kicker Justin Tucker on its roster (though he might be on his way out). He’s been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by over a dozen massage therapists.
This is a team that had Ray Rice on it. He was involved in a terrifying case of domestic violence.
Not sure how the “draft process” went with those two but whatever.
Now Green. He faced two separate allegations of sexual assault between high school and college (he discussed this at February’s scouting combine). He was previously suspended from Virginia’s football program. Then transferred to Marshall.
Eric DeCosta, the Ravens’ general manager, explained the team’s reasoning for taking Green.
“I would say that we investigated this situation very thoroughly,” DeCosta said. “I think we have the best scouts in the NFL. We’ve got great scouts that go into Virginia. They go into Marshall. We’ve got people that work for investigating different incidents with players all the time, and we felt comfortable taking (Green). We think he’s a talented player. We understand the severity of what these allegations were, of course, but doing our due diligence, we are comfortable with Mike. I personally spent an hour and a half with him in my office, and I think the best is yet to come with him, and I’m glad we got him.”
Said coach John Harbaugh: “I actually wasn’t here the day we met with him, but I’d just echo what Eric said. It was Eric. It was our scouts. I was in all the meetings. I heard all the reports. What Eric said was … It’s not so much what they were and what they weren’t. It’s just as important, and the coaches and administrators and teammates at Marshall were fully supportive of everything he had done there, and (it was the) same at UVA. It wasn’t any different at UVA. It was exactly the same from that standpoint, so you talk about due diligence. It was exhaustive – what these guys have done – and we made a decision based on what we felt was fair.”
It should be noted that when the Browns were dealing with the numerous and ugly accusations against quarterback Deshaun Watson, Harbaugh said the Ravens have a “zero tolerance policy.” He didn’t say what that zero tolerance was for. But use your imagination.
There are parts of the league that the NFL wants players (and fans) to revere. But what the league forgets is that we see the ugly corners of the sport, too. We don’t ignore those. We’re just as aware of them as the manicured images the league wants us to solely consume.
The draft is over. The process continues. The extremely flawed process.