What did the Ravens know about he Ray Rice video and when did they know it? (USATSI)
The Baltimore Ravens' director of security, Darren Sanders, knew exactly what was on the second Ray Rice video just hours after the incident occurred in February, according to a report released Friday evening by ESPN's Outside the Lines.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 15, Sanders spoke with a security officer at Revel Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., and that security officer gave Sanders a detailed description of the punch Rice threw to knock out his wife inside a casino elevator.
According to the report, Sanders then shared everything he knew with team executives in Baltimore, though it is unclear whether he spoke directly with team president Dick Cass or Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti.
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If the Ravens front office was in the dark, they weren't for long. Rice hired lawyer Michael Diamondstein on Feb. 17 and Diamondstein quickly got together with Cass to figure out a legal strategy for Rice. Cass wanted the situation taken care of as quickly as possible, according to OTL.
The case was almost resolved on Feb. 19 after Diamondstein set up a plea deal for Rice. However, before the deal could be signed, TMZ released the first video that showed Rice dragging his wife out of the elevator.
After that video became public, the prosecutor decided to show the evidence to a grand jury. Rice was subsequently indicted on one count of third-degree aggravated assault in late March.
If the Ravens didn't know what was on the second video before the indictment, they definitely knew what was on it afterward. According to the OTL report, Diamondstein received a copy of the second video in April and then called Cass to explain what was on it.
"F---ing horrible," Diamondstein said. "Ray knocked her the f--- out."
At that point, Cass obviously knew Diamondstein had a copy of the video, but he never asked to see it and neither did anyone in the NFL.
Cass and Diamondstein agreed that Rice needed to avoid going to trial, otherwise the video would be made public. Rice was entered into a pretrial diversion program in May, a program that's given to less than 1 percent of violent offenders in New Jersey.
In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in September, Cass claimed he had no knowledge of what was on the video and implied that Rice hadn't been truthful when explaining it to the Ravens.
"There's a big difference between reading a report that says he knocked her unconscious or being told that someone had slapped someone and that she had hit her head," Cass said. "That is one version of the facts. That's what we understood to be the case. When you see the video, it just looks very different than what we understood the facts to be."
Now, Cass is going to have to answer even more questions about what the Ravens knew and when they knew it. Obviously, it also begs the question of what the NFL knew and how it handled the situation.
According to the report, Rice went into his June 16 meeting with Roger Goodell under the belief that Goodell had seen the video. Four sources told Outside the Lines that "Rice gave Goodell a truthful account that he struck his fiancee."
Goodell has vehemently denied that he saw the second video before it was released by TMZ on Sept. 8 and repeated again on Friday that the account of the incident Rice provided in that June 16 meeting did not line up with the contents of the second video.
The Ravens issued a statement Friday night in response to the ESPN story:
The ESPN.com "Outside the Lines" article contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings. The Ravens will address all of these next week in Baltimore after our trip to Cleveland for Sunday's game against the Browns.
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