Whelp, the other shoe has…um…sort of dropped.  While we were all distracted by Potentially P(a)edophile Princes and Tua Tagovailoa’s first contract value going from $30 million to $3.5 million because Nick Saban wanted to “practice” the two-minute offense in a meaningless blowout, the wheels of Shield Justice continued to grind for the participants of last Thursday’s Fracas at the Factory.

To recap, Myles Garrett was given an indefinite suspension of not fewer than six games (plus a $45k fine) for trying to murder Mason Rudolph with his own hat; the Shittier Pouncey Twin was given three games and a $35k fine for kicking and punching Garrett while he was down, and Larry Ogunjobi was given one game.  Rudolph was fined $35k but not suspended.  On appeal, an arbitrator upheld Garrett and Ogunjobi’s punishments, while Pouncey’s was reduced to two games.  At the end of the day, it looks like Garrett’s swing will end up costing him around $1.1 million in forfeited salary and fines.

However, there’s NEW JUICY DEVELOPMENTS.  As noted in the last column, there had been rumblings that Rudolph (an apparent MAGACHUD who yearns for frigid protoCoulter embrace of Fox News RealDoll Tomi Lahren) may have said something…untoward… to Garrett during their brief tete-a-tete on the ground before everything went to monkeyshit.

Now, those rumblings have become…um…louder rumblings.  Both Josina Anderson and Adam Schefter report that “sources” told them Garrett told the arbitrator that Rudolph “directed a racial slur” at him. Normally I am quite skeptical of this sort of telephone-game-reporting. However, the involvement of Arch Access Whore Adam Schefter means that this is essentially an official press release of either the NFL or one of the major agents.

Garrett is represented by Bus Cook, who you may remember from both Greydickgate and Farve’s Retirement Circus. He still qualifies as a major agent, with several high-profile clients who are set to be central figures this NFL offseason (notably Jadeveon Clowney and Cam Newton).  Hmmmm….

I’ve not seen any direct comment from Garrett or his people on the issue. Freddie Kitchens (THIS GUY FREDDIE, I CALL HIM FREDO BECAUSE HE’S GOING TO BE STRANGLED IN A ROWBOAT ON LAKE ERIE) issued a non-denial, simply saying “[w]hat Myles and I talk about stays between Myles and I[.]”  Several of Garrett’s teammates have essentially backed him without saying they actually heard anything, perhaps best exemplified by Sheldon Richardson: “I didn’t know nothing about it, nah….I wouldn’t doubt it, though. Had to be something to get him out of his body, that’s not Myles.”

The Steelers immediately came out with a statement that “Mason vehemently denies the report of being accused of using a racial slur during the incident Thursday night in Cleveland[.]”  Unpack that, and it means that he denies Garrett made the accusation at all.  That would jive with the literal reading of the NFL’s statement today that there was “no such evidence” of a slur.

Rudolph’s own people promptly went PCP-Laced Bananacakes anyway. The full screeds are too shrill to go into in depth, but this snippet from his lawyer gives you a flavor: “The malicious use of this wild and unfounded allegation is an assault on Mason’s integrity which is far worse than the physical assault witnessed on Thursday. This is reckless and shameful. We will have no further comment.”   There was then further comment.

Frankly, I’m torn. On the one hand, Mason Rudolph appears to be the kind of person I want to believe the worst of.  Even if he used one of the Most Forbidden Words, Garrett shouldn’t have brained him, but to quote Chris Rock on OJ: I understand.  Further, my Lawyer Brain always suspects that when a representative gets that strident and shouty from Jump Street, the lady doth protest too much.  Also, it does fill something of a hole in the narrative- how we got from “I tackled you and you took offense” to “I’m going to leave LLEDDIR imprinted on your skull.”

On the other hand, Bus Cook is fucking scum and this has his fingerprints all over it. Garrett looked pretty bad, though he was getting some credit for accepting responsibility. And apparently the main thrust of his case was more technical (that Antonio Smith only got two preseason games and one regular season game suspension for swinging a helmet at Richie Incognito in 2013) than exculpatory. So my suspicious little brain also whispers that this is a way for Cook to partially vindicate his client without having to make a direct public accusation of The White QB Who Got Off Without A Suspension.

Why not make a public accusation if it happened, you ask?

Because the NFL does Not Want To Fucking Deal With Race. Not now, with Kaepernick kicking up dust again. Not ever. If Garrett had come out publicly after the game and said “Rudolph called me the N-word so I clocked him” then that’s all we’re talking about for the next three weeks. And that’s bad for business. We went through this with Incogonito and Jonathan Martin, and the NFL finally managed to spin that into “both these guys are nuts and a weird one-off situation.”  Accusing the Heir to the Throne of one of the NFL’s Golden Franchises of being a racist prick puts a big sign on Garrett as a Troublemaker.

So letting it “slip” that Garrett was set off by a racial slur allows Cook to portray his client as a Good Company Man, keeping the dirty laundry in-house, while still letting the public know that his client Wasn’t Really to Blame.

So in conclusion: everyone involved was still wrong.