Exactly. If that video had never gone public, he'd still be on the Ravens roster and playing right now (as he would have still only been suspended two weeks at that point). Then the video goes public and suddenly it's time for everyone in the Ravens and NFL organizations to throw Rice under the bus and leave him out in the cold by himself while everyone else sits on their thrones thumping their chests and yelling "harrumph" and patting themselves on the back for taking a stand against domestic violence. They did nothing but cover their fucking asses when that video went public.
While the video was still hidden from the public, they gave him their full support and backing. When the video went public, they knew it would be a 100% losing effort and losing battle to try and cover and protect Rice, so they essentially excommunicated him from the NFL, the Ravens cutting him from the roster and organization and the NFL indefinitely suspending him, making him persona non grata around the NFL and making him unhireable to anyone and everyone in the league.
This wasn't a case of Rex Grossman getting cut because he wasn't good enough to beat out the players ahead of him on the roster, this was a case of the NFL and Ravens suddenly making Rice, one of their star players and a player that would have never been cut by the Ravens otherwise, undesireable to anyone in the NFL and essentially kicking him out of the NFL just because a previously hidden from the public video went public and they no longer found it worth their effort to try and deflect the public backlash and defend him, instead throwing him out to the wolves. Not even remotely the same situation between what happened to Rice and just some suck ass player getting cut from a roster.
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