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More NFL missteps in Josh Brown case? Sheriff blasts league for investigation

When more information was released in the Josh Brown case this week, including admissions by Brown that he abused his ex-wife, the New York Giants and National Football League said they did not know about it. The Giants left Brown home from a road game in London after the latest information became public.

The NFL specifically said it tried to request the information from the King County Sheriff’s Office and was denied. Technically, that’s true, Sheriff John Urquhart said. But, with the NFL placing the public blame on his office, he shot back at the league for its investigative work.

Urquhart said that his office did get an email from Rob Agnew requesting documents. The message was from a Comcast email address. The sheriff’s office didn’t know Agnew was a security representative for the NFL in Seattle, because Agnew never told them.

“Nowhere on the request does he say that he works for the NFL and so, we don’t know that it’s the NFL and we’re not gonna give it out anyway, so we denied it,” Urquhart said in an interview with KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson, via MyNorthwest.com.

“’NFL, National Football League,’ he could have (said) any of that,” Urquhart told KIRO. “Robert Agnew, Comcast.net, post office box in Woodinville. We had no idea who this yokel is.”

Urquhart was clear that the documents weren’t being released to anyone, considering it was an open investigation. He also said he got several calls from a woman saying she was with NFL security, and a Seattle police officer who said he worked for the NFL. But he said the NFL never filed a written public disclosure request, and if the league had gone through the proper public disclosure channels, he would have been able to help its investigation. The NFL gave Brown a one-game suspension, much lighter than the six games spelled out in its new domestic violence policy, and in part blamed a lack of information on the light suspension.

“I would have said exactly the same thing, ‘We cannot release the case file.’ But since this is a hot-button item in the NFL, since it’s the NFL, we probably would have told them orally a little bit more about what we had,” Urquhart said. “We’ve got some goofus from Woodinville named Rob Agnew asking for the case file. We have no idea who he is.

“We would have told them … ‘Be careful, NFL, don’t rush into this. This case is blossoming way more than what happened on May 22 of 2015. We’re getting more information, be careful.’ Again, we’re not gonna give them specifics but we certainly would have cautioned the NFL to be careful about what they were going to do.”

The NFL is probably wondering why its multiple phone calls from representatives weren’t enough to get to that conversation with Urquhart, or at least be informed that the sheriff’s office expected a formal written public disclosure request from someone who identified themselves as an NFL employee. And the NFL wasn’t getting the documents that came out this week anyway; they were not available to the public because of the investigation. In those ways this becomes an unfair criticism from a sheriff who is clearly upset that he was called out publicly by the NFL, which Urquhart referred to as a “bully” in the interview.

But the entire case has looked bad for the NFL. Giants co-owner John Mara said on Thursday, “He admitted to us he’d abused his wife in the past.” The NFL did help Molly Brown switch hotel rooms at the Pro Bowl after Josh Brown pounded on her hotel door and she called security, SNY.tv’s Ralph Vacchiano reported via an NFL source. Urquhart said the NFL would have gotten some actionable information had it followed standard public records procedure with the sheriff’s office – although it’s fair to be skeptical about that.

The league doesn’t always do so well when it gets out of its lane, which should be running a football business. The Brown case is looking like another example.

Josh Brown was left home from the Giants' trip to London (AP)
Josh Brown was left home from the Giants’ trip to London (AP)

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!