Janay Rice: Goodell Is Not Honest
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Rebuilding Rice. As the former Raven tries to regain his footing in the NFL, his wife is telling her story, her revelations and their future. Janay Rice says the Ravens asked her to apologize during her infamous first press conference after the punch. She also claims Ray Rice never hit her before and she believes she's no victim.
Mike Hellgren has more on what else Janay is saying now.
Janay Rice said she was angry at the media and at the Ravens. Her mother said she was sickened after seeing her daughter get knocked out. It's an image Janay herself says she'll never watch.
"I do deeply regret the role that I played in the incident that night," she said at that first press conference.
She claims the Ravens asked her to apologize during the disastrous press conference in May, telling ESPN, "I had already apologized to Ray and I felt that I should take responsibility for what I did. Even though this followed the Ravens' suggested script, I owned my words."
But nothing proved more explosive than video showing the man who would later marry her delivering a knockout punch. She won't watch it and revealed on NBC the coverage that followed pushed her to her breaking point.
"I was so angry, so hurt, seeing them hit the man that I love, everything ripped up from under him. The support system that I thought we had in the Ravens. That made me angry," she said.
She told ESPN, "I was extremely surprised and angry that the Ravens released him because they know him. They were our family but I felt like the Ravens completely disregarded the past six years with him," she said.
Leaving Baltimore will be hard for her family.
"We have to pick up and move our child from where she's used to. It hurt," she said.
Her husband won an appeal of his indefinite suspension and can now play at any time.
"Michael Vick got another chance. Donte Stallworth was in a fatal hit and run; he got another chance. I think that next year, that certainly a team will take a chance on him," said Geoff Foster, sports editor at the Wall Street Journal.
Justin Forsett, who replaced Rice on the Ravens, believes he deserves that second chance.
"I know he'll run with it and do a great job, coming back and being the man he wants to be," Forsett said.
"You would think we lived in a country full of people who've never made a mistake," Janay Rice said. "Everybody makes mistakes."
Janay says she loves Ray and he's never hit her before or since the punch seen around the world.
She says she was drunk during the incident and she doesn't remember getting hit. She believes the Ravens releasing her husband was a knee-jerk reaction for publicity reasons.
According to published reports, several NFL teams have expressed interest in Rice but there are no formal offers at this point.
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