Shut up, Josh Brown

Admitted domestic abuser and New York Giants kicker Josh Brown was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list last week after documents were released in which he confesses to abusing his wife.

Tuesday, Brown released a statement, regretting that his past “has called into question the character or integrity of The New York Giants, Mr. Mara or any of those who have supported me along the way.”

Last Thursday, Giants owner John Mara was on WFAN 660, and said that it was “too early to tell” what the outcome would be with Brown.

“He admitted to us he’d abused his wife in the past,” Mara said. “What’s a little unclear is the extent of that.”

Mara’s comments were understandably not taken well, because it doesn’t matter what the extent of the abuse is. It’s abuse, and it’s wrong. The beginning of Brown’s statement very much sounds like an apology from Mara, just coming from Brown, as if he’s taking a hit for Mara with his own career essentially over now.

Brown claims in the statement to have never hit his wife, and says that “abuse takes many forms, and is not a gray area.”

Then, if it wasn’t apparent already, the statement becomes even more self-serving:

Through the past several years I have worked to identify and rectify my own behaviors. The road to rehabilitation is a journey and a constant modification of a way of life. My journey will continue forever as a person determined to leave a positive legacy and I embrace the opportunities to show and speak about what has helped me to be that man.

This sounds good and all, but Brown doesn’t tell us any measures that have actually been taken to improve his behavior. An hour after the statement was released, the Giants released Brown with a different version of Brown’s statement that was published on the Giants website. It did not include the part where Brown says he did not hit his wife. According to Ralph Vacchiano of SNY, the statement released by ESPN of Brown saying he never struck his wife was an updated version.

Up to this point, Brown has only apologized for contributing to making the Giants and their ownership look bad, and not hitting his ex-wife, while also not mentioning her name, Molly.

That doesn’t take away from the fact that he still abused her.

The entire statement captures exactly what is wrong with Brown. Brown seems to view his issue as something that’s strictly his battle, when he was the abuser. He didn’t show care for Molly, and he didn’t show any remorse for her in the letter, and made a poor attempt at making himself look better by saying he didn’t hit her.

In the Giants and Brown’s attempt to make themselves appear better, they only made things worse for themselves. It was a poor and insincere effort at an apology, and has been an unfortunate common theme with the entire league and domestic abuse.