It’s commendable the NFL is attempting to take a firm stance against domestic violence, ending decades of weakness and double standards on such a terrible plague.

Not hitting women is easy. Too often NFL players have done it anyway.

Yet, as with so much of the Roger Goodell era, even a well-intentioned idea can come undone via arrogance and incompetence.

Everything these days is a reaction to the league doing a poor job investigating Ray Rice. Then, the NFL failed to follow through and acquire the ugly elevator surveillance tape, only to be horrified and humiliated when the video later emerged. Now, it supposedly presses everything.

Any investigative and judicial system, however, has to be rooted in transparency and fairness, or else whatever verdict it renders – even seemingly the most justified – is compromised. To cut corners is to undermine not just the righteousness of the decision, but the victim seeking justice.

Under commissioner Roger Goodell, the NFL conducted a 13-month investigation before finding Ezekiel Elliott guilty. (AP) More

Only Ezekiel Elliott and his one-time girlfriend, Tiffany Thompson, know for sure what happened between them in July 2016. Thompson said she was repeatedly abused. Elliott vehemently denies it.

Authorities in Columbus, Ohio, chose not to prosecute. The NFL conducted its own 13-month investigation and found Elliott guilty, leveling a six-game suspension last month. Elliott appealed and lost Tuesday night in a decision that was not a reaffirmation of the ruling but based solely on whether Goodell had enough information to make a ruling.

A restraining order Elliott filed against the league will be determined late Friday by a Texas judge. Either way, Elliott will play Sunday in the Dallas Cowboys’ season opener against the New York Giants. Nothing after that is guaranteed.

This isn’t to say Elliott did or didn’t do it. It’s to say, if the NFL is going to make that determination, if the league is going to discipline a player for an act as serious as domestic abuse, it needs to be airtight in both its reasoning and the process that led to its decision.

The most glaring issue is NFL investigator Kia Wright Roberts testified at Elliott’s appeal hearing that she would not have recommended suspending Elliott in this case. She cited a lack of corroborating evidence, both via witnesses and other data, to back up Thompson’s story. She was the only person from the NFL to speak to Thompson.

The NFL is within its rights to reject the opinion of its investigator, but doing so warrants an explanation. Rather than provide one in its original ruling that deemed Elliott’s actions “inappropriate and disturbing,” the league failed to mention Robert’s counter-opinion at all.

The NFL just acted like it didn’t exist. Or, more likely, operated under the belief the counter-opinion would never get out.

This is malpractice. And not just if you are inclined to believe Elliott did no wrong.

It’s especially malpractice if you’re the NFL and you believe that he did.

Having the lead investigator disagree with the decision due to a lack of evidence and credibility has to be revealed. Then it needs to be explained away, immediately and thoroughly. It’s the obvious weak point of the decision, and thus needs to be answered for in convincing fashion.

This is Day 1 of law school stuff. You have to fight for your accuser.

To just hope no one finds out is ridiculous. Elliott and the NFLPA were going to pursue every defensive angle available. Everything was (and is) going to come out. It’s a lesson the NFL should have learned during deflate-gate when it blatantly misstated testimony from Tom Brady, only to be burnt when a federal judge, against the league’s vehement protest, unsealed transcripts of the hearing.

Mostly, though, this is completely unfair to Thompson, who shouldn’t be put on her heels by the now one-sided revelation about Roberts’ opinion. If the NFL was going to completely believe Thompson and base its case on Thompson’s word, then it needed to proactively defend any obvious attacks on her.

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