Josh Brown situation gets worse for Giants, NFL

The NFL and/or the New York Giants aren’t very good at public records requests, it seems.

The league said it gave Giants kicker Josh Brown a one-game suspension for a misdemeanor domestic violence arrest, and not a standard six-game suspension (which the new domestic violence policy said Brown should have gotten) because Brown’s then-wife didn’t speak to the league and during a 10-month investigation, “we also made numerous requests — as late as this spring — to local law enforcement officers for information on the case and previous allegations.”

And apparently in those 10 months they couldn’t find that Brown had violated a protective order two months after his arrest.

ESPN and USA Today cited a police report — which is readily available upon request — which said Brown was spotted by his then-wife driving his pickup near the driveway of their house in Washington in July of 2015. Brown’s ex-wife had a protective order which prevented Brown from being within 500 feet of her.

“He drove by the house and I looked in the rearview mirror,” his wife wrote in her statement to police, according to USA Today. “Josh knows about the order and cannot come within 500 feet form the house. I have no idea why Josh would come by my the house.”

Brown was arrested on a misdemeanor count of violating the protection order a day later, USA Today reported. They again cited the documents, which are part of public record.

The NFL’s decision to give Brown a one-game suspension instead of the six it outlined in its policy has been widely criticized, and the Giants’ support of him has been odd too, especially after coach Ben McAdoo said in January that the one thing he wouldn’t tolerate was domestic violence. The excuse that Brown’s ex-wife wouldn’t talk doesn’t make a lot of sense either, considering that hasn’t been a precedent. For example, Greg Hardy was suspended in 2015 and his alleged victim isn’t known to have spoken to the NFL.

It’s all a pretty embarrassing mess for the league and the Giants, who didn’t seem too interested in finding out everything there was to know about Brown’s case.