Ray Rice feels guilty about ‘collateral damage’ he caused the NFL and Roger Goodell

Ray Rice and his wife Janay are still working every day to repair their relationship in the wake of Rice’s February 2014 assault on his then-fiancee at an Atlantic City casino. The incident was caught on tape, later released in two parts by TMZ.com and touched off the largest ongoing scandal in NFL history, which was driven by the violent scene on the video and the league’s bumbling response to it.

Rice is no longer suspended from the NFL, but he is trying to make a comeback. He and Janay opened up about their lives up to and in the wake of the incident in an extensive interview in the latest issue of New York Magazine. You can and should read the whole article online, but here are a few takeaways from it.

Rice still wants to play

He says he’s in playing shape still, thanks to twice-a-day workouts. He even lost 10 pounds. More than anything, Rice believe the chance to get on the field again would allow him to redeem himself, and he’d even be willing to do that for the league’s minimum veteran salary.

Football as an escape and wedge

Football has always been a coping mechanism for Rice. The game allowed him to deal with the pain of losing his father, who was murdered before Rice’s second birthday, and the difficult circumstances surrounding his childhood in New Rochelle, NY.

“When I didn’t want to think about the situation I was in, I had football,” Rice said.

That continued when he was with the Ravens and trying to start a family with Janay.

In Baltimore, though, Rice’s priorities were elsewhere. “Football came before everything and everyone,” he told me. Janay accepted that as necessary, but it was a sore point. “It was definitely frustrating. It was hard knowing I wasn’t his first priority,” she said.

The interview reveals Rice as growing distant in the months before the assault. Rice was more focused on football and his status as a celebrity than his family, using those commitments to stay away from Janay and their infant daughter. That led to a building tension that spilled over on Valentine’s Day 2014 in the Atlantic City casino.

In light of that, it was a little haunting to know that Rice still believes another shot at an NFL career would somehow redeem him.

Rice is in therapy

Since the incident, Rice has been working with therapist Dr. Paul Ball, who’s a former college football player himself.

“He was in a very dark place,” Ball said, recalling his first meeting with Rice after the assault. “He was very, very remorseful and very, very sorry and in a lot of pain.” Rice talked about “checking out.” “I gave him probably three sessions to cry,” Ball said. “And then, after that, no more crying.”

They started by getting to the root of the issue, the pain Rice carried with him from his childhood. After the process of breaking him down, Ball and Rice focused on the present and the future, including rearranging his priorities from football to “God, family and then football.”

He feels bad for the NFL and Roger Goodell

It’s true. Rice acknowledges in the interview that his actions put the NFL in a difficult spot and relentless public scrutiny. He even felt bad for how Goodell was treated in the public eye.

“It’s unfortunate that my actions caused collateral damage that I never could have imagined,” he told me. “Unfortunately, even though I was responsible for creating the situation, commissioner Goodell ended up taking quite a hit for it.”

While it’s true Rice punching his then-fiancee started a chain reaction, Goodell and the NFL’s incredibly poor handling of the situation deserves the criticism, all of it. A report from ESPN’s Outside the Lines last fall revealed that Goodell initially went light on the punishment for Rice under pressure from the Ravens owner.

Since then, the NFL has created a new personal conduct policy and a new domestic violence policy that includes training for players and a wider awareness campaign.