On Tuesday afternoon at the NFL scouting combine, Baltimore Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta answered questions about the reports of sexual misconduct by kicker Justin Tucker. It was the first time that a team official had publicly addressed the situation in the 26 days since The Baltimore Banner’s report, in which several Baltimore-area massage therapists said that Tucker had behaved inappropriately in treatment sessions.
“The allegations are serious, concerning,” DeCosta said. “The amount of allegations are serious and concerning. I think we are fortunate that the league is doing an investigation. We’ll wait as patiently as we can for as much information as we can, and we’ll make our decisions based on that.”
In late January, the Banner reported that six massage therapists said that Tucker “engaged in inappropriate behavior” while visiting their spas between 2012 and 2016. The women, who all spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation, gave examples, saying that Tucker wiggled away the sheets that covered his penis during massages, moved to brush therapists with his penis during treatments, and, in three cases, left what appeared to be ejaculate on the massage table. Managers at two of the spas confirmed to the Banner that they had banned Tucker as a client. After the story was published, Tucker posted a statement via social media saying that the stories shared by the massage therapists were “unequivocally false,” calling the Banner’s reporting “tabloid fodder,” and mentioning multiple times that he’d hired defamation attorneys. In the weeks since, 10 more women have come forward to share similar stories with the Banner, putting the total number of massage therapists who have said Tucker behaved inappropriately with them at 16.
The NFL has said it is looking into the matter, and DeCosta cited that investigation multiple times when speaking about Tucker on Tuesday. He stated that any decision the Ravens might make about Tucker’s future with the team would be a function of the NFL investigation’s findings.
“We’re fortunate that the league has come down to Baltimore,” DeCosta said. “I met with the league. I believe the league is meeting with other people in Baltimore as well. We’ll wait for the details of that investigation, and we’ll make a decision based on that.”
Tucker’s situation calls to mind the similar controversy that has surrounded Deshaun Watson. The accounts of Tucker’s behavior are similar to those given by the dozens of women who filed civil lawsuits against the then-Texans quarterback in the early 2020s. The NFL investigated, and Watson was ultimately suspended for 11 games in 2022. By then, he was playing for the Browns, who had traded for him and given him the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history. Just a few years later, it’s chilling to see another NFL player in a similar situation, and the league and a team once again determining where to draw the lines when it comes to player conduct.
When Watson was first suspended in August 2022, the Ravens probably didn’t see themselves winding up in the place they’re in now. Back then, Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh told reporters that he wasn’t able to speak his mind on the matter, but he strongly hinted that he would not have traded for a player like Watson, as the Browns had.
“I respect what [Ravens owner] Steve Bisciotti has created here—and [team president] Dick Cass—really 10 years ago,” he said after a training camp practice that August. “And basically, what we decided—what Steve and Dick decided, we’re all still here, Ozzie [Newsome, executive president of player personnel], [DeCosta], Pat Moriarty [senior vice president of football operations], that were involved with that—we’re kind of a zero tolerance. You gotta know the truth, you gotta try to understand the circumstances, but we’ve stayed away from that particular situation when we draft players [and] when we sign them as free agents.
“That’s Steve’s decision, and I’m glad we have that policy.”
What Harbaugh was referencing “10 years ago” was the Ray Rice case, a lightning rod that would reshape the NFL’s personal conduct policy with respect to domestic violence. Both the Ravens and the NFL badly mishandled their initial response to Rice’s arrest—the league gave him a two-game suspension, while Baltimore kept him on its roster and shared a statement saying, “There is more to Ray Rice than this one incident”—before video emerged of Rice punching his then-fiancée in a hotel elevator. The team cut Rice after the video was released, and the league vowed to do better. Although the application of the now-10-year-old conduct policy hasn’t been perfect, the NFL now has a six-game minimum suspension in cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. The Ravens, at least according to Harbaugh, have a “zero-tolerance” policy.
It’s not entirely clear when the Ravens adopted that policy, or whether they ever truly did. In their first offseason after releasing Rice, then-GM Newsome said it would be “tough” to sign a player with “domestic abuse in their background.” But the following offseason, in 2015, then–team president Dick Cass told ESPN that “it’s not a zero-tolerance policy at all” and that the team was “still going to be willing to take second chances on people if they deserve it.” In 2018, the Ravens did not release cornerback Jimmy Smith even though he received a four-game suspension after the NFL found that Smith had displayed “threatening and emotionally abusive behaviors” toward a former girlfriend.
Only after Harbaugh mentioned “zero tolerance” in 2022 in the context of Watson did the rest of the Ravens brass seem to adopt that as their baseline stance. When wide receiver Zay Flowers was investigated for domestic assault last offseason, team president Sashi Brown said that the zero-tolerance policy had not changed. Baltimore police later closed their investigation of Flowers without pressing charges, and the NFL found “insufficient evidence” that he’d violated the personal conduct policy. Flowers remains on the team, evidently not in violation of the Ravens’ policy; perhaps the Ravens could follow a similar approach with Tucker if he were to be cleared.
And on Tuesday, both DeCosta and Harbaugh referenced the policy but did not fully articulate what it means. Asked whether he regretted using “zero tolerance” to describe the team’s attitude toward domestic violence cases, Harbaugh said, “Absolutely not.” But when asked to explain the policy and how it could pertain to Tucker, he said that was “to be determined.”
“That’s something we have to find out,” Harbaugh said. “That’s what the review is for—to gain an understanding of what we’re even talking about. You can’t take action without understanding. You have to get the facts and understand what happened as best you can. Then, you take the situation for what it is, but the principle is the same. How you define that principle. … Maybe we’ll come out and make a definition of that at some point in time. That’s something that would be interesting to me. I think everybody understands the idea there, and let’s see where the review takes us.”
After Harbaugh and DeCosta spoke, a Ravens spokesman clarified to reporters that the team does not have a “defined, written zero-tolerance policy” and that “each situation stands on its own.”
Information is good. Past NFL investigations of similar situations, Watson’s included, have provided reasons to be skeptical about the league’s process. But at least in theory, it’s right to get as many facts as possible and make informed decisions. And frankly, if the Ravens have a kinda-sorta policy against employing players with a history of domestic violence or sexual misconduct, that is better than most. But it’s hard to trust a policy that no one can quite spell out, that seems to be selectively applied, and that’s been invoked most forcefully in what seems to have been just an opportunity for grandstanding in the wake of the Watson trade. It leaves the impression that the Ravens haven’t thought seriously about what their policy is or means and that they’re not bothering to choose their words carefully. That (perhaps intentional) ambiguity, more than whether their policy is zero tolerance or not, is a cause for concern.
The Ravens have already shown that zero doesn’t necessarily mean zero. The process leaves room to wait for the results of the NFL’s investigation and the possibility that Tucker could be cleared. A true zero-tolerance policy doesn’t leave room to weigh the circumstances and decide who’s worthy of a second chance in the aftermath. The Ravens very well may not worry about testing the limits of a so-called zero-tolerance policy this time, though. Tucker is 35 and coming off the worst season of his career, in which he missed eight field goals and two extra points. The cost of releasing him would be $7.5 million in dead cap. If the NFL decides that Tucker violated the personal conduct policy and the Ravens do cut him, you can decide whether it was because of their “kind of zero-tolerance” policy or not.
