The Worst Year In NFL History

"Football is not for the well adjusted."

— The late George Young, former New York Giants general manager

Is this how an empire falls? Does it begin with cracks THAT at first seem tiny? That's often how the great collapses start. They get ignored. Many scoff at predictions of their demise. The resources keep pouring in, so no one cares. The popularity is unshaken. The ratings beat everything else on television. The bond between product and consumer seems unbreakable. The empire looks imposing and unbeatable. Then something happens that signals a shift — a frightening moment inside the elevator of an insignificant casino, inside that elevator a declining player, once thought a good person, changing things forever. Or a 265-pound player being convicted for choking a petite woman. Or a star runner injuring his own four-year-old child. Is this how empires fall? Does it begin with the worst week in NFL history, in what was the worst year the sport has ever seen?

If the NFL's seemingly unbreakable stranglehold on the attention of American sports fans is indeed lost, then one week in particular — the week of September 8, 2014 — and one season in particular — the 2014–2015 season — will be seen as the catalyst.

That week started when security video of Baltimore runner Ray Rice knocking his fiancée unconscious was leaked; continued when the story was broken of Minnesota Vikings player Adrian Peterson hitting his young son with a switch, causing deep abrasions in his son's leg; and ended with calls for Commissioner Roger Goodell to resign and the NFL to lose its invaluable antitrust exemption. That week would bleed into the most controversial season the league has ever seen. The New England Patriots, once punished for filming opponents' sidelines in an attempt to steal signals — the infamous Spygate scandal — being accused of underinflating footballs to gain a competitive advantage. The Cleveland Browns were involved in a sideline texting controversy. The Atlanta Falcons were accused of pumping fake crowd noise into their stadium to keep opponents from communicating at the line of scrimmage.

There have been ugly moments in football history before this year. The NFL once played games in the hours following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a decision that former commissioner Pete Rozelle would call his greatest regret. Recently, Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was accused of multiple murders. Michael Vick ran a cruel and brutal dogfighting enterprise, and Chiefs player Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and then shot himself. There have been NFL players who killed people while driving drunk. Maybe the most famous, and infamous, NFL alum is O.J. Simpson.

In 1909, 26 people were killed and 70 injured playing football. There was nearly a nationwide panic about the safety of the sport. The New York Times ran a lengthy story in 1909 that read in part:

The State of Virginia will probably be the one which will give the heaviest blow to football. Following the death of one of the State University players and the injury of several of her youths within the State, a bill will be introduced into the Legislature at the next session to forbid all such contests in the future. It is expected that this bill will be passed. Already the City Council of Norfolk and Portsmouth have forbidden all contests within the city limits.

The death which attracted the most attention throughout the country, and which revived to a large extent the movement for the suppression of football, was that of Cadet Byrne, a West Point cadet. Byrne was an upper classman, 22 years old, when he was fatally injured during the contest with Harvard University. His neck was broken during a mass play, and despite the fact that every attempt was made to save his life, he died soon after.

The interest in this accident was so great that expressions of opinion were asked from the heads of nearly every institution of learning in the country. Some of them saw it in proof that the game should be abolished, while others urged changes in the rules. Some, however, looked upon it as an unfortunate accident and declared that the game as it is now played could not be made less dangerous without taking away the exciting features.

The issue was so serious that it ultimately required intervention from President Theodore Roosevelt. Yet those deaths, while tragic, happened in another century, long before there was even an NFL, or even professional football. And the crimes committed by players like Vick and Simpson happened months or years apart. That week ... it changed things because so many horrors happened in a span of days. The video of Rice attacking his fiancée, Janay, was a game-changer. It was no longer abstract; there it was, in living color. It was the same with images of the injured leg of Peterson's son. In the viral information age we live in, those images made it the worst year the league has ever seen.

There was no video of Vick killing and torturing dogs. There wasn't a camera mounted on the windshields of players who drove drunk and killed people. But there was video of Rice, and it was bad. The video first appeared on TMZ.com at 5:15 am Eastern time on Monday morning. It clearly showed Rice hitting Janay once and knocking her unconscious. It became viral in just a matter of hours. One league executive who saw the video later that morning immediately texted home to his wife: "You may not see me for a few days. Armageddon is about to hit here."

At the NFL offices, there was widespread disbelief. The best way to describe the reaction, as one league executive put it, was panic. The NFL, especially its smart and highly effective public relations arm, knew instinctively the damage it would generate. One of the initial main concerns of the NFL were the racial implications of the video. With a player base that is approximately 70 percent African American, the NFL was worried that a general public would see a black man hitting a woman and assume that most of its black players were that way. One white NFL assistant coach remembers, after seeing the video on ESPN, sitting his young son down to explain, "You're going to hear from some whites that all blacks do this. It's not true."

Some of Rice's teammates were equally stunned. They stood by Rice after the initial incident became public, before any video of the incident was released. Rice had told players on the team that he struck Janay, but it wasn't with a fist, and she had hit her head against a railing inside the elevator. When the footage emerged, some on the team, according to players, felt Rice had misled them. Several players talked openly about how they no longer wanted Rice on the team. Rice would contend he always told the truth...