Several years ago, when a high-profile NFL agent was shopping the services of a player beneath a domestic violence cloud, one overriding point became clear as he dealt with teams: Make the legal allegations against the player go away and the phone would start ringing.

“Teams didn’t want anything to do with him,” the agent recalled Thursday. “But once the charges were dropped, everyone in the league was calling.”

The agent’s point:

“The only thing Tyreek Hill should be worrying about [is] whether or not he’s going to be prosecuted for a crime,” the agent said. “If he gets past that, NFL teams will give him another chance. Whether or not he gets charged legally is what they care about.”

It's a simple message: The NFL's discipline is temporary, but legal discipline could be career-ending.

Tyreek Hill's attorney sent a letter to the NFL defending the Chiefs wide receiver from accusations of child abuse. (AP) More

This is the brass tacks reality for Hill, whose exchanges with the league’s domestic violence investigators hit a significant public relations phase on Thursday: The leaking of his defense.

More often than not, a legal allegation or exposure of evidence is followed by a significant defense leak that is aimed at repaving the narrative. That’s how the four-page response from Hill’s lawyer, N. Trey Pettlon, ends up in the public light Thursday. It attempts to set the stage for a battle with the league that is on a track toward critical mass.

But as an agent noted Thursday, what matters for Hill’s NFL career is more simple than whether or not the league delivers a suspension. Being charged with a crime and potentially facing an ugly public trial – that is what could mean the difference between remaining in the NFL or becoming one of the few players (i.e., Ray Rice and Josh Brown) to have the league collectively freeze them out following revelations of violent behavior.

Tyreek Hill sends message to DA

And make no mistake, Thursday’s letter to the NFL was an important piece of information for the Johnson County District Attorney’s office. That office has reportedly reopened the child abuse investigation into Hill and fiancée Crystal Espinal, following a leaked recording that suggested violence toward the couple’s child, and either obstruction or outright deception that may have occurred during the investigation that followed.

As much as the letter from Hill’s attorney may have been aimed at pushing back on the NFL’s domestic violence investigators, it was also pointed toward district attorney Steve Howe. It was Howe who previously said he believed a crime occurred involving Hill and Espinal’s son, while lamenting a lack of cooperation to bring charges. Now Howe has audio that includes the suggestion that the couple was violent toward their son, and that Espinal might have helped to cover up details about Hill’s involvement when speaking to investigators from the police department and child protective services.

In a sense, the letter from Hill’s lawyer to the NFL is now also a form of testimony to the DA. One in which the overriding majority of the letter is an explanation of the troubling audio dialogue, built around a lone piece of evidence: An alleged text exchange between a phone belonging to Hill and a phone belonging to Espinal, in which Espinal says she – and not Hill – was the abuser of their son.

Unanswered questions about Hill’s alleged text conversation

There is one foundational question about that letter to the NFL and the purported text exchange inside it: Does Howe and the Johnson County District Attorney’s office believe the content?

The other critical questions:

Does the DA believe that Hill abused his son, as Espinal alleges on the audio when speaking to Hill? Does the DA believe, as the letter asserts, it was actually Espinal who was abusive? Does the DA believe that Hill was merely being hyperbolic on the audio, when he responded to Espinal’s contention that his son was “terrified” of him by saying to Espinal: “You need to be terrified of me, too, dumb bitch.”

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