This will be a blessing for both Marshall and Royal.

I didn’t understand it correctly…I thought it said “could have it reduced by two”, not “could have it reduced to two”.

I’m an idiot! : )

We’re underdogs against the Raiders according to who? You need a nap or something bro.

We can still hope.

the official ruling will be made tomorrow so until then im not panicking or celebrating

It doesn’t excuse Marshall. 2 games, if accurate, is lucky.

should have been suspended as well for being in a car with a friend who possessed drugs.

When it comes to Lynch, blame the D.A. They agreed to a plea deal that had him admit to being guilty of nothing more than a traffic violation. As Goodell said, traffic violations are not in the conduct policy.

Marshall is going to get sent to his room for being a repeat “offender”. Sure, he hasn’t been “convicted” of anything, but 8 different instances with police involving serious crimes. Yes, I consider domestic violence a serious crime.

The point is, if you repeated show up in the police blotter you are going to get suspended. Sure, maybe the girl is a psycho and she baited him into the first time. What about the second? The third? The fourth? The fifth? The sixth in March of this year?

I have felt all along it would be two games and that anything more would be overkill. I really think, in the end, in this instance, it is the best for the LONG TERM future of Marshall and the Broncos…

Definately agree, lets get the suspension out of the way and move on from it with a clean(ish) slate from week 3.

I think we have more than adequate depth to compete for the first two matches of the season and we should be looking to turn this to our advantage.

The upsides are an early look at Royal, an early chance for Colbert or Martinez to prove their worth to the team and more importantly, and optimistically, a fresher B-Marsh for the start of the playoffs.

get it done and move on. Any delay at all isn’t worth it. It breaks up practices, scheduling, game day rosters and everything in between. Let him start the season two weeks later with a blank slate.

...The Ray Lewis issue was well before the current policy.

..it is a problem with the behavior of some athletes. At least the NFL (unlike other sports leagues) looks like they are trying to address it. Blame the bad characters, not the ones trying to fix the problem.

It wasn’t B.S(though I don’t necessarily believe that it is), I simply stated that it IS part of the Conduct Policy and every player knows it.

If Brandon Marshall wants to avoid situations like this, DON’T GET THE POLICE CALLED ON YOU 8 TIMES! Period, end of story. This is a situation that reminds me of when there is an accident during a police chase. Blame the cops, forgetting that it was the people running from the cops that are really to blame.

The question isn’t whether or not it is FAIR. Life isn’t fair. It’s not fair that I can’t run as fast, jump as high, or grow as tall as Brandon Marshall. That’s not fair. I’ll say it again, the NFL is not acting on the 1st incident, the 2nd incident, the 3rd incident, the 4th incident, the 5th incident, the 6th incident, the 7th incident, they are reacting to the collective whole and they have been pretty consistent with it. If you are a REPEAT OFFENDER, meaning you repeatedly put yourself(and the League) in a bad light, the league will react.

From a football side. If this football team is as good as many around here say and the rest of us hope, then we’ll be able to overcome. Everyone will need to step up. This is no different than if Marshall would twist his knee a week before the Raider game. Let’s strap it on and focus on who we’ll have on September 8th and not who we won’t….

of this I do agree with. I have been waiting to give my full opinion until A) The League reacts, and B) What their reasoning is….

that it has increased the attention, though it could be argued that it was far worse when Tagliabue was in and major incidents looked like they were being ignored.

Which brings us to your idea about a rigid policy, which could be executed in numerous ways. For arguments sake, I will take a different tack, however, and suggest that having Goodell (or someone) in his position better serves the interest of the NFL as a collection of employers and employees.

My thought is that a rigid structure couldn’t possibly have allowances for the infinite variety of context and circumstances that surround each case individually. Having Goodell weigh and judge the instances himself allows him to consider each case uniquely, and hopefully appropriately, in a fashion unaccessible by a rigid rule structure. Now, it could certainly be argued that he wasn’t the best man for the job, or that he engaged in favoritism or institutionalism or any other irrational, non-objective means of establishing the concept of justice, in which case he could be replaced with another person, or even a panel or something. Of course, its the NFL, not the judiciary, so one has to ask how far it needs to go…

In his favor, I would submit that the owners chose him to represent them and the NFL. This is not a perfect argument, but many of the owners are highly successful businessmen and human beings, and their judgment shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

Against him, I would personally present the fining of Shanahan for speaking out on what he felt was a mishandling of the Henry case. I could, of course, be biased there, since I am a huge fan of Shanny. Other than that, I haven’t spent much time breaking down Goodell, and would have to look into it further.

...players with multiple brushes with the law, count me out.

It seems to me that anything requiring automatic penalties would have to involve the NFLPA. Maybe they could come up with some sort of range of penalties for the various offenses (i.e., 1-2 games for first arrest, 1-4 for second, 2-6 for third, etc.). This would allow for mitigating circumstances that could be used to judge the severity of the penalty.

Also, how about coming up with a committee to determine the actions of the league in regards to penalties? Just like the owner’s have a Rules Committee, maybe they could come up with a Conduct Committee that would determine the severity of penalties in Conduct Detrimental to the League cases. Of course, there would have to be some ground rules as to owners that would have to recuse themselves (e.g., the owner of the team affected, possibly other owner’s in the division, etc.). You don’t want Davis, Hunt or Spanos determining the penalty for a Bronco’s transgression (especially someone as vital as BMarsh). Maybe only allow owners from the other conference?

I don’t know, but it might be something to look into or think about…

One, automatic penalties don’t allow for consideration of mitigating or aggravating circumstances. Second, if your issue is progressive punishment, how many more brushes with the law does Marshall need to be sanctioned?

As HT pointed out, to really be just, it MUST consider mitigation and aggravation. It cannot be consistant and known in advance, perhaps beyond some kind of range. Perhaps one of the biggest (though by no means only) problems with the current criminal justice system is the mandatory sentence. The public, perceiving injustice demands tighter sentencing laws. Legislators, seeking re-election, give it to them. But nothing could be worse for actual justice when we tie the hands of the most experienced and wisest person involved in the case.

My issue is consistency and media involvement. I am not bringing up the idea of automatic consequences to argue the saving of Marshall. If it was consistent and known in advance I think players and fans would actually respond better, and it would take the media out of the endless false reporting, pot stirring, speculating that occurs. Thus there would be less attention on the infractions, so it would be cleaner perception for the fans. Plus it would take Goodell out of his Roger Almighty role, which has allowed for subjectivity, but which has resulted in inconsistency. I do not know if anyone feels they got a better deal because Roger met with them, and took a holistic, personal view of their infractions. The bottom line is if the goal of the policy is to reduce off-field infractions and to better the image of the NFL, then I do not think it has worked so far.

The problem is not the media. They can only report news if there’s news to report. Neither is Goodell the problem. A lot of Tennessee fans thought he was being unfair to Pacman. A lot of Bengals fans thought he was being unfair to their players. And so on. In that respect we’re no different from those other fans. We have a very biased viewpoint. The only real problem I see with this whole process is that appeals are made to the same person who made the original ruling. That’s like getting a second opinion from the same doctor who gave you the first one. Perhaps what is needed is a committee appointed by the owners, which might or might not include some or all of the owners, to whom appeals could be addressed. The player or his representative could argue why he thinks the ruling is unfair or inappropriate, and Goodell could explain why he thinks it’s justified. I think there should be a bias towards not overturning Goodell’s rulings, at least not on a regular basis, but it would be good to have the commissioner’s decisions affirmed or overturned by someone other than the commissioner himself.

I don’t agree, however, that the new policy has been ineffective. I don’t think more players are misbehaving than before. We’re just noticing it more because they’re publicly paying a price. This might make such behavior more obvious over the short term, but I don’t really think the general public is so dense as to not realize that all this bad behavior is so visible right now because the NFL is dealing with it, and that doing so is not a bad thing.

If all those things had happened within a span of a year or less, rather than “in my life,” perhaps you should or would have been suspended. In that case, even if you were proven legally blameless in every single instance, one would have to suspect that there was a pattern of behavior involved. My dad got into numerous accidents in his life. If he pulled up to an intersection almost at the same time as another driver, had the right of way but noticed that the other driver was about to go, his attitide would be, “I’ve got the right of way so if we have an accident it’ll be his fault.” And time after time he did have accidents, and time after time it was technically the other guy’s fault. Would you say, therefore, that he was not only skilled (which he was) but also a good driver? Would you even say that he was blameless for the many accidents he was involved in? One might be tempted to say, it doesn’t matter who was to blame in each and every instance. You’re the common denominator and you need to get your head out of your ass. I suspect that’s sort of what the league is trying to tell Brandon.

Because all of those incidents happened before your present employment. Ahmad Bradshaw of the Giants is going to jail for 30 days at the end of the season for something that happened before he came into the League and the NFL announced no punishment will be rendered because the incident happened before he entered the League.

If you knew, when you were employed, that certain actions could cost you time at your job, and you commited those actions, then yes. And be honest, if you did something that embarrassed your profession over and over again, embarrassed your peers, I’m sure there are ramifications.

Forget the damn media for one second. I posted the Conduct Policy. Forget what the media is saying and read the document that every employee, not just players, every employee must abide by. If you know the consequences and still do it, who’s to blame??

If those things happened while you were an attorney you might be sanctioned by the Bar. A military attorney (JAG) / officer wouldn’t be an officer / JAG for long, even with the two dismissed charges and no traffic infractions, OR any one AWOL.

The pattern of behavior that you exhibited may have been in your younger days, but if those behaviors happened only in the last year or so and you were an attorney (or a pro football player) I would certainly understand the Bar in your state or the NFL (respectively) passing some form of sanction.

The answer is yes.

...if the rumors are true, the amount of inconsistency and seemingly arbitrary basis for making these decisions when compared to other recent suspensions (or lack of) in the league.

If you’re just going to make your decision based on a whim…HOW CAN IT TAKE SO LONG???

To let this fester, and allow all the rumors, to me that is punishment enough. Just for that reason there should be no suspension!!

He answers to the collective discretion of the owners.

Bmarsh being able to lessen his suspension by addressing some of the issues involved (counseling) than I would say Goodell HAS taken a close look, and seen what many Broncos fans see: bmarsh needs to feel a lot better about himself and where he is at, and take some control of his situation.

Giving him the power to reduce his own suspension is a huge tool and should empower Brandon in ways that will help him put this all behind him in a hurry, and seems to take into consideration that Brandon wasn’t being a bad guy, but was definitely not in rational control of his situation…