
Editor's note: The above video is from Aug. 7, 2015.
Aldon Smith has been suspended by the National Football League for a year for the August incident which originally got him released by the 49ers.
On the other hand, this being discipline in the modern NFL, I wouldn’t bank on this lasting an entire year. After all, the discipline guide, like the playing rulebook, is subject to peer review, further review, interminable review and alteration based on the league’s ability to defend its positions (nebulous), the quality of the appeal (typically stronger than the league’s position) and most of all, wind direction.
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Smith said goodbye to his Oakland Raiders teammates Tuesday upon hearing the word, but that is not the same as him going quietly into stasis. He is a repeat offender, true, and his unwillingness to define his issues as sufficiently alcohol-related to require strict treatment protocols, but Smith also has access to the same people who got the suspensions of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Tom Brady and Greg Hardy changed, and the NFL saying something is so is, as we have seen, not at all the same as it actually being so.
Now Smith could reassess his life in the time he does spend away from football, and one would like to think the Raiders would be as strident in their private support as the 49ers were in their public support.
But that’s the treatment avenue, which is different than the disciplinary one. It is by far the more important one, no matter what your position on the Raiders’ pass rush happens to be. There is no guarantee in this post-apocalyptic world that the league’s word is the same as its bond.
So what you have is Smith either being ineligible for the entire calendar year to next Nov. 17, at which time he could be playing in his third city (Carson), released outright, successful in an appeal that he has not yet said he would pursue, or just . . . well, in that NFL netherworld where anything is possible because nothing is certain.
NFL
Rice was suspended two games until it became an entire year. Brady got four games that became none. Peterson had a suspension vacated in court. Hardy got 10, reduced to four but seriously should be measured in years.
Smith’s problem here is that there is no outraged external constituency to make his case a public relations issue. He is neither an important player in the league, has committed an outrageous enough crime, been obdurate or crass in his defense or been eager to show contrition for his prior transgressions through good deeds.
In short, the NFL said what it had to say Tuesday about Aldon Smith. Smith is about to have his. Perhaps the Raiders are willing to become involved as well, though their delicate position vis a vis the league on relocation may militate toward silence.
But what we know, frankly, is a lot less than what the NFL wishes we knew, because the NFL knows less than it used to.