While there are many NFL players who hem and haw when it comes to domestic violence or speak strictly in clichés when they are asked about it, Steve Smith has been very vocal in the past about his disdain for those who are arrested for abusing their significant others. His mother is a domestic violence survivor, so he has gone out of his way to speak out against NFL players like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy when they were involved in high-profile domestic violence cases.
With that in mind, it wasn’t all that surprising to see the Ravens wide receiver lash out against Giants kicker Josh Brown on Thursday after new details emerged about his involvement with domestic violence. According to police documents, Brown admitted to abusing his ex-wife Molly in a series of letters, emails, and journal entries that she turned over to authorities after he was arrested for domestic violence in May 2015. And Smith was so disgusted with the situation that he sent out this tweet shortly after the latest news about Brown broke:
On Thursday night, Smith took to Twitter again to flesh out his thoughts on the subject of domestic violence and to blast the NFL as a whole for not taking domestic violence seriously enough. Smith suggested that league officials are entirely too slow to respond to reports of domestic violence involving players, and he said "our system is broken" in his lengthy social media message:
"I will admit my response [to the Josh Brown news] was a bit extreme," Smith wrote, "for that I apologize. The point I was trying to make things have to change! A Man should NEVER Hit a woman which means he isn’t A REAL MAN. We have valued the amount of air in a ball but yet devalued when a person or persons have been harmed and fail to put forth necessary actions or energy and time in which far less important things have taken precedent! There has been players with far lesser offensives some have been banned, cut on the spot. But this person had behavior patterns behind closed doors unknown to everyone while swift and harsh action handed down to many other players without half the details or amount of time. Our system is broken the NFL needs to stop acting like they care and start Showing people they mean what they Say!!! I will continue to speak for the voiceless and for my mother who is a Survivor domestic violence."
If the Josh Brown situation is a true indication of how the league handles all domestic violence cases, Smith is 100 percent right. The NFL does have a broken system on its hands. And it’s clear they need a few more people like Smith in their offices to figure out how to fix it.
